Beresheet to land on moon.

[ZenOps]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceIL

Taking off today, but will take a very long time to land on moon because it will do several doughnuts around earth first. If successful Israel will be the fourth nation to successfully place an item on the moon.

150 kilogram object, very impressive. No thermal ability, is expected to survive for two days.

[CompletelyNumb]

Does a beresheet in the woods?

[ZenOps]

Only if it has doughnuts for breakfast.

That they figured out an "fuel efficient path" 40-day path to the moon, four orbits around earth and two around the moon means they can increase the size of the craft from 50 kilos to 150 kilos, but lose time - meaning it won't land until well into April. Doesn't matter though for a craft that is fully automated, go for max capacity. They can also be much much harsher on landing, as there are no living beings to have to compensate for G forces on.

If they miss their 40 day + week prep land window (extra orbit around earth or moon) the craft is expected to last six hours before it burns up on the surface.

[HiTempguy1]

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four orbits around earth

Is that a torus shaped orbit?

[ZenOps]

https://www.space.com/israel-lunar-l...trip-moon.html

Inflating torus sure.

[ZenOps]

https://gizmodo.com/israels-bereshee...oon-1833979818

And... It failed. Was good up until 150 meters above surface, and that was it. Its worth noting that 150 meters on earth at regular fall height on earth would definitely kill most beings. Moon although less gravity, also doesn't have any atmosphere to slow things down. Obviously the electronics could not survive the impact.

India now has a chance to be the fourth nation to "successfully" land an object on moon, with their 27 or 37 kilogram rover.

BTW: It does call into play the idea that NASA are dicks for not sharing their landing thruster technology with the rest of the world - 50 years later. I mean, a sack of rice sized 300G survivable rover should be a cake walk by now. That is, if NASA wants to be remembered as dickwads to the world, which is the way I'm seeing it.

Personally I think they vastly overestimated their payload capacity. They should have went with 50 kilogram, and packed it with extra fuel for minor guidance errors. I mean seriously, you have to slow down the craft down from Mach 22 (about 8x faster than a bullet) to less than the speed that would cause a car bumper to crumple under stress in a very short period of time, all while falling towards the ground. Until aerospace technology is developed and refined, metal probes/rovers will definitely be in the $100 million gamble, on the short side for a while. Living creatures? Hah. Living creatures that can land and take off again? Dare to dream.

If NASA built the wheel, they would have used it once to do a cross country race - and then burned the plans so that no one else could repeat it. Damn you NASA, damn you.