Computer reset cancels orbit-raising burn on Israel's moon lander
Source: Spaceflight Now
Computer reset cancels orbit-raising burn on Israel’s moon lander
February 26, 2019 Stephen Clark
A computer reset on the Israeli Beresheet lunar lander forced has the postponement of the mission’s first engine firing to begin maneuvering closer to the moon, officials said Tuesday.
Mission managers said the robotic lander — seeking to become the first privately-funded spacecraft to reach another planetary body — automatically aborted an orbit-raising maneuver after its on-board computer reset unexpectedly. The engine firing was planned Monday evening, U.S. time.
“During the pre-maneuver phase the spacecraft computer reset unexpectedly, causing the maneuver to be automatically cancelled,” the team said in a statement.
Beresheet — which means “in the beginning” or “genesis” in Hebrew — launched Feb. 21 from Cape Canaveral on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, riding piggyback with the Indonesian Nusantara Satu communications payload and the U.S. Air Force’s S5 spacecraft to monitor satellite traffic in geostationary orbit.
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While Nusantara Satu and the military’s S5 space surveillance spacecraft head for geostationary orbit — located more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator — Beresheet is heading the the moon, taking a circuitous stepwise approach utilizing 10 burns by the lander’s main engine, a repurposed communications satellite thruster.
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Read more: https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/02/26/computer-reset-cancels-orbit-raising-burn-on-israels-moon-lander/
Artist’s illustration of the Beresheet lander’s elliptical transfer orbit around Earth. Credit: SpaceIL