Israeli private lunar rover Beresheet crashed while trying to land on the moon

The development of the device has been carried out by SpaceIL since 2012 as part of the Google XPrize competition. It was assumed that the lunar rover

will be able to land on the surface of the Moon and jump 500 m, and will also send photographs and soil analysis to Earth.

On February 22, the Falcon 9 rocket launched Beresheet onorbit where the device will spend 2.5 months, gradually rising. Then the rover will start the engines and fly to the moon - it was planned that he will land on Earth's satellite on April 12, 2019.

However, when landing on the moon at the unit refusedthe main engine, after which it crashed to the surface of the satellite. A soft landing of the lunar rover would provide Israel with the title of the fourth country in the world, which was able to successfully send an unmanned mission to the surface of the moon.

We lost the device. Unfortunately, we were unable to land successfully.

Ofer Doron, engineer