Jerusalem, April 12
Israel's Beresheet, the first privately funded mission to the moon, crashed in the last part of its journey, moments before it was supposed to land, the media reported.
The spacecraft aimed to perform a soft landing on the moon and would have made Israel the fourth country to do so — and by far the smallest. Only the US, the former Soviet Union and China have done it before, CNN reported.
“I am sorry to say that our spacecraft did not make it in one piece to the moon,” Opher Doron, the manager of Israel Aerospace Industries’ Space Division, said. “We made it all the way to the moon. This is a great accomplishment. We are the seventh country to make it all the way to the moon.”
The $100 million spacecraft, built by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries, lost communications with the control room during the landing sequence. At the time of the communications failure, the Beresheet was travelling at 2,110 mph and was about 120 km from its intended landing site. — IANS
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