(Ha'aretz) Asaf Ronel - The failure of Israeli lunar spacecraft Beresheet to land safely on the moon and its crash in the final moments of its landing should not blunt the technological and engineering achievement of SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries. The fact that a craft built at a cost of $100 million met most challenges of the journey and maneuvers along the way is extraordinary. Making it through liftoff, the extreme conditions of space, maneuvers to leave earth's orbit, the longest route a manmade object has ever taken to the moon and the complex "trapping" of the moon's orbit, SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries showed that it is possible to (almost) reach the moon at one-tenth of the cost of previous journeys.
2019-04-15 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive