BICOM

An Israeli spacecraft is expected land on the moon later today, meaning Israel would be only the fourth country ever to reach the moon.

The spacecraft, named Beresheet-Genesis, was launched six weeks ago. The landing manoeuvre will be executed solely by the spacecraft’s computer. If successful, it will become the first private spacecraft to land on the moon. Beresheet emerged from the Google Lunar XPRIZE, which offered financial backing in 2007 to any non-government funded team that could successfully complete a moon landing, although the competition ultimately closed without a winner.

The project is led by Space IL and is funded by Morris Kahn, a South African-born Israeli billionaire and Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, as well as others. The Israeli government-owned Israel Aerospace industries is a partner in the mission but is not involved in the project’s funding. Experts believe it will herald a new era in moon research involving the private sector. Countries including the US and China, the latter of which completed a moon landing in January 2019, have recently increased their interest in moon travel.

In the final hours before landing, the spacecraft’s flight engineers will search for a flat surface 19 miles (30 kilometres) in diameter where Beresheet can safely land at a time when the moon’s surface is not too hot from exposure to the sun. Once it has located a site and positioned itself correctly, at around 9 miles (15 kilometres) above the surface, the spacecraft will receive the command to commence landing, at which point the lander will go into autopilot. The information received by its sensors will be transferred to navigation control software, which will calculate the command to slow the engines of the spacecraft.

At around five metres from the surface, the engines will be turned off and the spacecraft will drop gently to the ground. At this stage the main concern is a bumpy landing if the spacecraft lands on a rock or crater, resulting in it flipping over and rendering it unable to complete its mission. Another concern is that the main engine could fail to operate properly or that there might be a malfunction with the landing sensor.

On route to the moon, Beresheet orbited the Earth in ever-increasing orbits until it was about 400,000 kilometres away. It set a record for the longest path ever travelled by a man-made object destined for the moon.

The mission has both scientific and symbolic purpose. It aims to measure the moon’s magnetic field, which astronomers still don’t fully understand. But once on the moon, Beresheet will take a selfie and plant the Israeli flag.