PSN-6 (Pasifik Satelit Nusantara 6), Beresheet (SpaceIL), S5 - Falcon 9 - CCAFS SLC-40 - 22.02.2019, 01:45 UTC

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Nusantara Satu - на геостационаре

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НОРАД обнаружил отделение КА AFRL S5 от КА Nusantara Satu (в каталог внесено ещё два объекта)

Код Выделить Развернуть

0 S5
1 44065U 19009D   19068.15483592 -.00000319  00000-0  00000+0 0  9992
2 44065   0.0736 281.3183 0001047 255.8494 182.8166  0.99342627    51

0 S5 DEB
1 44066U 19009E   19067.68333016 -.00000265  00000-0  00000+0 0  9995
2 44066   0.0769 284.0608 0004530 283.3858 337.9023  0.98987653    58

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Jonathan McDowell‏Подлинная учетная запись @planet4589 8 мар.

Two objects have been released in GEO from the Nusantara Satu satellite. One is the @AFResearchLab S5 satellite; the other could be a lens cover or attach hardware for it, or a previously secret extra payload. Hopefully we'll get clarification.

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Jeff Foust‏ @jeff_foust 13:43 - 16 мар. 2019 г.

Oded Aharonson, Weizmann Inst. of Science and SpaceIL science team lead: have checked out the magnetometer on the Beresheet lander and it is working well. Will be used to study lunar crustal anomalies.

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Jonathan McDowell‏Подлинная учетная запись @planet4589 7:26 PDT - 19 мар. 2019 г.

The @TeamSpaceIL Beresheet lunar probe made its translunar injection burn at 1230 UTC. The 60 second burn raised apogee from 270 000 km to 420 000 km (the Moon is currently 360,000 km from Earth)


Jeff Foust‏ @jeff_foust 7:30 PDT - 19 мар. 2019 г.

SpaceIL reports another successful trajectory correction maneuver for its Beresheet lunar lander, putting it into an orbit with an apogee of 405,000 km. A "few small maneuvers to optimize the spacecraft's trajectory" are planned to set up capture into lunar orbit April 4.


Israel To The Moon‏ @TeamSpaceIL 7:53 PDT - 19 мар. 2019 г.

Moon Travel Report #6 Another successful maneuver! The engine was activated for 60 sec & all systems are functioning. #Beresheet is on an elliptical orbit, will meet the #moon - the furthest point from #Earth: 405,000 k"m. #IsraelToTheMoon @ILAerospaceIAI @ILSpaceAgency

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https://ria.ru/20190320/1551951768.html

Израильский "луноход" успешно вышел на траекторию сближения с Луной
12:19

МОСКВА, 26 фев – РИА Новости. Первый частный лунный аппарат "Берешит", созданный израильским космическим стартапом SpaceIL, в четвертый раз успешно включил свои двигатели и сделал последний шаг к сближению с Луной и посадке на ее поверхности. Об этом сообщает прес-служба SpaceIL.

"Это последний крупный маневр на пути к Луне – возможно, что в будущем нам придется провести серию мелких коррекций орбиты, но столь длительных включений двигателя больше не понадобится. Можно сказать, что мы успешно вышли на путь сближения с Луной", — заявил Офер Дорон (Opher Doron), руководитель космического отделения компании IAI, создававшей посадочную платформу.

Израильский аппарат "Берешит" был успешно выведен в космос в конце февраля на борту ракеты Falcon 9. Изначально он создавался для участия в нашумевшем конкурсе Lunar XPrize, в рамках которого частные любители космонавтики должны были создать полноценный луноход и отправить его на спутницу Земли.

Строго говоря, израильские разработчики схитрили, и создали не луноход, а "лунопрыг" – робот, который коснется Луны в одной точке, оттолкнется от нее и пролетит 500 метров. После этого он получит фотографии спутницы Земли, снимет ее на камеру и отправит полученные данные назад.

Несмотря на огромные шансы на успех, "Берешиту" не удалось победить в Lunar XPrize, так как конкурс был отменен почти год назад из-за того, что ни одна из участвовавших в нем команд так и не успела подготовиться к запуску до конца 2018 года. Несмотря на потерю главного "спонсора", SpaceIL удалось найти других инвесторов и отправить свой аппарат в околоземное пространство.

Там он проведет примерно 2,5 месяца, постепенно удаляясь от Земли и повышая свою орбиту. Пережив небольшое "ЧП", связанное с перезагрузкой главного компьютера зонда, "Берешит" уже провел три успешных маневра, которые постепенно выводили его на траекторию сближения с Луной.

Вчера израильский зонд провел последнюю, четвертую коррекцию курса, в рамках которой он включил двигатели примерно на минуту. Это вывело его на вытянутую эллиптическую траекторию движения, дальний конец которой находится за орбитой спутницы Земли.

Как отметил Дорон, постоянные перезагрузки компьютера, связанные с высоким уровнем радиации и неполадками в работе датчиков положения звезд и Солнца, сделали подобную манеру сближения с Луной неожиданно сложной и опасной для зонда. Тем не менее, большинства проблем удалось избежать после обновления программной начинки "Берешита".

По текущим оценкам израильских специалистов, зонд достигнет Луны ориентировочно в начале апреля, после чего совершит посадку в Море Ясности в канун дня космонавтики и проработает на поверхности спутницы Земли примерно два дня.

Если эта затея будет реализована, то "Берешит" станет не только первым частным космическим аппаратом на Луне, но и установит первый "негосударственный" израильский научный прибор, детектор магнитного поля, на поверхность спутницы Земли и проведет первые замеры при его помощи.

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https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/03/19/beresheet-lander-on-course-for-the-moon/

Beresheet lander on course for the moon
March 19, 2019 | Stephen Clark

The privately-funded Israeli Bersesheet lander is on course to enter orbit around the moon April 4 after another boost fr om its main engine Tuesday.

A 60-second firing by Beresheet's 100-pound-thrust main engine at 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) Tuesday raised the apogee, or high point, of the spacecraft's elliptical orbit around the Earth to an altitude of more than 250,000 miles (405,000 kilometers), according to SpaceIL, the non-profit group that heads the privately-backed lunar lander mission.

"That's enough to reach the distance of the moon from the Earth, and it's actually our last maneuver to get closer to the moon," said Opher Doron, general manager of Israel Aerospace Industries' space division, which built the Beresheet spacecraft and operates the lander's control center. "We will have a couple of more maneuvers over the following days that are small maneuvers to slightly adjust our trajectory, but we are on our way to the moon, very successfully, right now."

Since its launch Feb. 21 from Cape Canaveral on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Beresheet lander has fired its main engine several times to raise its altitude closer to the moon. Beresheet, which means "genesis" or "in the beginning" in Hebrew, rode as a secondary payload on the Falcon 9 rocket, which delivered the lander, an Indonesian communications satellite and a U.S. Air Force smallsat to an egg-shaped supersynchronous transfer orbit ranging as high as 43,000 miles (69,000 kilometers) from Earth.


This illustration shows how the Beresheet spacecraft's orbit-raising burns gradually raised the moon lander's altitude to intercept the moon April 4. Credit: SpaceIL

The Indonesian Nusantara Satu communications satellite and the Air Force's S5 space surveillance craft maneuvered into geostationary orbit over the equator, while Beresheet began orbit-raising burns to head for the moon. Beresheet's British-built LEROS 2b main engine, a modified version of an engine designed for commercial satellites, has conducted four orbit-raising firings since launch.

[/li]
• Burn 1: Feb. 24 at 1129 GMT (6:29 a.m. EST); 30 seconds
• Burn 2: Feb. 28 at 1930 GMT (2:30 p.m. EST); 4 minutes
• Burn 3: March 7 at 1311 GMT (8:11 a.m. EST); 2 minutes, 32 seconds
• Burn 4: March 19 at 1230 GMT (8:30 a.m. EDT); 1 minute
  

Ground controllers identified an issue with the spacecraft's star tracker cameras shortly after launch. The cameras are used to locate the positions of stars in the sky, helping determine Beresheet's orientation in space. SpaceIL says the star trackers are too sensitive to blinding by bright sunlight.

"We've learned to deal with difficulties we've been having with the star trackers, and what that entails in maneuvering the spacecraft in a non-nominal fashion," Doron said Tuesday. "So that was working quite well today. We were lucky to have the engine firing in a communications pass. We actually saw it in real-time."

With its four landing legs extended, Beresheet has a diameter of around 7.5 feet (2.3 meters), and measures 4.9 feet (1.5 meters) tall.

Beresheet's main engine will fire again April 4 to steer into a preliminary orbit around the moon, followed by additional rocket burns to spiral closer to the lunar surface, setting up for landing April 11 on the moon's Mare Serenitatis region.


The completed SpaceIL Beresheet lunar lander is pictured with its solar panels attached. Credit: SpaceIL

The landing site is in the northern hemisphere of the moon's near side, wh ere cameras will capture panoramic views of the lunar surface, and a science instrument will measure the magnetic field. NASA also provided a laser reflector on the solar-powered spacecraft, which scientists will use to determine the exact distance to the moon.

The U.S. space agency is also providing communications and tracking support to the mission, and the German space agency, DLR, provided facilities for Israeli engineers to simulate Beresheet's landing on the moon.

But Beresheet is privately-funded, and the mission aims to become the first to reach the moon without government backing. Billionaire philanthropists supported the $100 million mission's development through financial contributions.

"We have a vision to show off Israel's best qualities to the entire world," said Sylvan Adams, a Canadian-Israeli businessman who contributed to the mission, in a press conference before Beresheet's launch. "Tiny Israel, tiny, tiny Israel, is about to become the fourth nation to land on the moon. And this is a remarkable thing, because we continue to demonstrate our ability to punch far, far, far above our weight, and to show off our skills, our innovation, our creativity in tackling any difficult problem that could possibly exist."

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После манёвра

Код Выделить Развернуть

0 BERESHEET
1 44049U 19009B   19079.85416667 -.00057171  00000-0  00000+0 0  9990
2 44049  25.0088  10.5463 9637541 181.7585  43.0154  0.08972053   1291261 x 407521 km x 25.009°, 2019-03-20 20:30:00

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Israel To The Moon‏ @TeamSpaceIL 7 мин. назад

"Unlike previous maneuvers in which we accelerated the spacecraft's speed to increase its orbit, in this maneuver (20/03/19) we modified the orbit's plane to slightly tilt the angle & ensure the spacecraft reaches the lunar orbit at exactly the right time & place." - @MasaCritit


5 мин. назад

"Since its launch, #Beresheet has performed 3 key maneuvers to reach higher altitudes. The current maneuver (20/3/19) has aligned its #orbit to achieve accurate lunar capture." - says Ephi, Beresheet project manager at @ILAerospaceIAI #IsraeltotheMoon #spaceil

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SpaceIL - Sunrise video from Beresheet

SpaceIL

Опубликовано: 24 мар. 2019 г.

Sunrise From the spacecraft's point of view - in the video Earth can be seen hiding the sun from the spacecraft and then exiting the same shadow created by the Earth and the sun's exposure. This process creates a kind of sunrise image.

(0:19)

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SpaceIL - Video selfie

SpaceIL

Опубликовано: 24 мар. 2019 г.

Selfie video from Beresheet Cam6- Landing gear deployment

(0:05)

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Yoav Landsman ‏ @MasaCritit 22:54 PDT - 29 мар. 2019 г.

Tomorrow at about 13:24UTC, #Beresheet will pass perigee for the last time. 4 days later, she'll enter lunar orbit. On Monday morning, a small orbit correction will be executed in order to set the perilune altitude.
The coming week will be intense and exciting.
#spacecrafting

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Israel To The Moon‏ @TeamSpaceIL 4 ч. назад

Moon Travel Report #7
#Beresheet completed another successful maneuver! Aimed at achieving precise synchronization with the #moon. #SpaceIL & @ILAerospaceIAI ran the spacecraft's engines for 72 seconds. #IsraelToTheMoon

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Israel To The Moon‏ @TeamSpaceIL 4 ч. назад

Yesterday, #Beresheet passed #Earth for the last time at about 1,700 km away. The team succeeded in taking rare photo of earth from approx. 16,000 KM. In the photo: the Arab Peninsula & Southeast Africa. Yesterday's rain clouds covered #Israel. #IsraelToTheMoon

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Israel To The Moon‏ @TeamSpaceIL 3 ч. назад

This Thursday, #Beresheet will reach the moon's orbit & perform a Lunar Capture: a maneuver entering the #moon's gravity & will begin circulating towards its planned landing. #SpaceIL & @ILAerospaceIAI are practicing scenarios & simulations in the hybrid lab. #IsraelToTheMoon

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Chris B - NSF‏ @NASASpaceflight 5 мин. назад

Meanwhile, on its way to the Moon. Beresheet continues to perform well!

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Yoav Landsman  ‏ @MasaCritit 9 ч. назад

Earth as seen by Beresheet at a Height of 16,000 km.

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SpaceIL - Beresheet's planned Lunar Capture

SpaceIL

Опубликовано: 3 апр. 2019 г.

(1:30)

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https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/04/03/israels-beresheet-lander-heads-for-make-or-break-maneuver-to-enter-lunar-orbit/

Israel's Beresheet lander heads for make-or-break maneuver to enter lunar orbit
April 3, 2019 | Stephen Clark


Artist's illustration of the Beresheet lander in orbit round the moon. Credit: SpaceIL

An Israeli spacecraft has one shot Thursday to swing into orbit around the moon with a six-minute engine firing, a critical maneuver that will set up for the privately-funded probe's historic landing attempt April 11.

The hydrazine-fueled main engine mounted to the base of the Israeli Beresheet lunar lander is set to ignite around 1415 GMT (10:15 a.m. EDT). The six-minute firing will reduce Beresheet's velocity relative to the moon by more than 600 mph (about 1,000 kilometers per hour), enough for lunar gravity to capture the spacecraft in an elongated orbit.

If the robotic spacecraft misfires Thursday, it will continue past the moon and escape Earth's gravitational grasp to head deeper into the solar system, bringing the mission to an end.

"It's a simple maneuver, but it's very important and very critical," said Ido Anteby, the CEO of SpaceIL, the non-profit organization that led the development of the Beresheet mission.

Beresheet aims to become the first privately-funded spacecraft to orbit another planetary body after Thursday's lunar capture maneuver. With a successful touchdown April 11, the craft will become the first private probe to land on the moon.

The spacecraft will target a landing in the Mare Serenitatis, or Sea of Serenity, region on the upper right part of the moon as viewed from Earth.

Спойлер

Beresheet has been circling the Earth since launching Feb. 21 from Cape Canaveral aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The lander rode into space as a piggyback payload on the Falcon 9, joining an Indonesian communications satellite and a U.S. Air Force space surveillance satellite on the same rocket.


A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off Feb. 21 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, with the Israeli Beresheet lunar lander, Indonesia's Nusantara Satu communications satellite, and the U.S. Air Force's S5 space surveillance spacecraft. Credit: SpaceX

The Falcon 9's upper stage released Beresheet in an elliptical orbit ranging as high as 43,000 miles (69,000 kilometers) in altitude. After separation, the spacecraft deployed its four landing legs. With the lander gear extended, Beresheet has a diameter of around 7.5 feet (2.3 meters) and measures 4.9 feet (1.5 meters) tall.

A series of main engine burns nudged Beresheet into longer orbits that took the spacecraft farther from Earth.

"Since we were launched about five weeks ago, we've been circling the Earth in ever-growing orbits, and our current orbit brings us to about 420,000 kilometers (261,000 miles) above Earth, just above the moon's trajectory. We've passed our final perigee, that's the closest point of approach to Earth, a couple of days ago, successfully," said Opher Doron, general manager of Israel Aerospace Industries' space division, which built the Beresheet spacecraft and operates the lander's control center.

Beresheet has traveled more than 3.4 million miles — about 5.5 million kilometers — since departing Cape Canaveral.

Ground controllers identified an issue with the spacecraft's star tracker cameras shortly after launch. The cameras are used to locate the positions of stars in the sky, helping determine Beresheet's orientation in space. SpaceIL says the star trackers are too sensitive to blinding by bright sunlight.

Beresheet also missed one of its orbit-raising engine burns in late February due to a computer reset, but engineers kept mission on schedule for its arrival at the moon.

"We've made some corrections along the way to our course, and we are en route to intercepting the moon ... Thursday afternoon (Israeli time), and there we will be performing a complex maneuver to get out of Earth's orbit into the moon's orbit," Doron said Tuesday. "So we'll be captured by the moon by our maneuver, and after that, we are on our way to landing."

Beresheet must accomplish at least 70 percent of the impulse planned for Thursday's lunar capture burn in order to be snared into orbit around the moon, according to Yoav Landsman, Beresheet's deputy mission director at SpaceIL.


If Thursday's maneuver goes according to plan, Beresheet will enter a 14-hour orbit ranging between 310 miles (500 kilometers) and roughly 6,200 miles (10,000 kilometers) from the moon. Further engine firings over the next week will place the lander in a circular 124-mile-high (200-kilometer) orbit in preparation for landing.

"Once we reach the right point we'll be just giving the spacecraft the command to start the landing phase," said Yariv Bash, a co-founder of SpaceIL. "From that moment on, the spacecraft will automatically start landing on its own, all the way to the surface of the moon.

"Roughly 15 feet (5 meters) or so above the surface of the moon, the velocity will go to zero, and then we'll just shut off the motors and the spacecraft will perform a free fall all the way to the surface of the moon," Bash said Tuesday. "The legs of the spacecraft were designed to sustain that fall, and hopefully once we are on the moon we'll be able to send back images and videos to Earth."

Three young Israeli engineers and entrepreneurs established SpaceIL in 2011 in pursuit of the Google Lunar X Prize, which promised $20 million grand prize for the first team to land a privately-funded spacecraft on the moon, return high-definition imagery, and demonstrate mobility on the lunar surface.

The Google Lunar X Prize contest ended last year without a winner, but Beresheet's backers kept the mission alive.

Morris Kahn, a South Africa-born Israeli billionaire, put $40 million of his fortune toward the mission, and serves as SpaceIL's president. Other donors include Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, a casino and resort magnate who lives in Las Vegas. IAI, the lander's prime contractor, also invested some of its own internal research and development money into the program.

The Israeli Space Agency awarded SpaceIL around $2 million, the program's only government funding.

The entire mission has cost around $100 million, significantly less than any government-backed lunar lander. Still, raising $100 million from private donors proved a challenge.

"I never in my wildest dreams thought that we would get to something like $100 million, but once we got going, we were actually in," Kahn said Tuesday. "It was a challenge, and actually, I love a challenge."


SpaceIL co-founders Kfir Damari, Yonatan Winetraub and Yariv Bash ins ert a time capsule on the Beresheet spacecraft. The time capsule includes three discs with digital files that will remain on the moon with the spacecraft. The discs include details on the spacecraft and the crew that built it, and national and cultural symbols, such as the Israeli flag, the Israeli national anthem, and the Bible. Credit: SpaceIL

The X Prize Foundation, which organized the original Google Lunar X Prize competition, announced March 28 that it will offer a $1 million "Moonshot Award" to SpaceIL if the Beresheet mission successfully lands on the moon.

"Though the Google Lunar X Prize went unclaimed, we are thrilled to have stimulated a diversity of teams from around the world to pursue their ambitious lunar missions, and we are proud to be able to recognize SpaceIL's accomplishment with this Moonshot Award," said Anousheh Ansari, chief executive officer of the X Prize Foundation.

"SpaceIL's mission represents the democratization of space exploration," said Peter Diamandis, founder and executive chairman of the X Prize Foundation. "We are optimistic about seeing this first domino fall, setting off a chain reaction of increasingly affordable and repeatable commercial missions to the moon and beyond."

A successful landing will not only mark a first for the private space industry, but will also thrust Israel in to an exclusive group of nations that have put a spacecraft on the moon. So far, the United States, Russia and China have successfully landed probes on the moon.

"We have a vision to show off Israel's best qualities to the entire world," said Sylvan Adams, a Canadian-Israeli businessman who helped fund the mission, in a press conference between Beresheet's launch. "Tiny Israel, tiny, tiny Israel, is about to become the fourth nation to land on the moon. And this is a remarkable thing, because we continue to demonstrate our ability to punch far, far, far above our weight, and to show off our skills, our innovation, our creativity in tackling any difficult problem that could possibly exist."

Beresheet means "genesis" or "in the beginning" in Hebrew.

Because of the project's limited budget — a fraction of the cost of government-funded lunar landers — the Israeli team had to adapt technology designed for other purposes to the moon mission. For example, the main thruster on the lander is a modified engine typically used to adjust the orbits of large communications satellites.

During the landing sequence, the engine will be switched on and off to control the lander's descent rate. It can't be throttled.

Most of the systems on the spacecraft were built without a backup to control costs.

"Our spacecraft has very low redundancy," Anteby said. "One sensor that fails could fail the whole mission."

After landing, Beresheet will collect data on the magnetic field at the landing site. NASA also provided a laser reflector on the spacecraft, which scientists will use to determine the exact distance to the moon, and to pinpoint the lander's location. The U.S. space agency is also providing communications and tracking support to the mission.

The German space agency — DLR — also helped the SpaceIL team with drop testing to simulate the conditions the spacecraft will encounter at the moment of landing.

The Israeli-built lander is designed to function at least two days on the moon, enough time to beam back basic scientific data and a series of panoramic images, plus a selfie. The laser reflector is a passive payload, and will be useful long after the spacecraft stops operating.

Beresheet also aims to deliver a time capsule to the moon with the Israeli flag, and digital copies of the Israeli national anthem, the Bible, and other national and cultural artifacts.

Doron said IAI originally did not see much of a future for the custom-designed lander design after the Beresheet mission. But that is changing as NASA and the European Space Agency look at purchasing commercial rides to the moon for science experiments, and eventually people.

IAI and OHB, a German aerospace company, signed an agreement in January that could build on the Beresheet mission by constructing future commercial landers to ferry scientific instruments and other payloads to the moon's surface for ESA.

According to Doron, IAI is also in discussions with U.S. companies to use Israeli technology developed for the Beresheet project on commercial lunar landers for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. NASA selected nine companies last year to be eligible to compete for contracts to transport science and tech demo payloads to the lunar surface.

SpaceIL and IAI were not among the winners, but Israeli engineers could partner with U.S. firms to meet NASA's requirements.

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