The rocket’s two other payloads were a telecommunications satellite for Indonesia and an experimental satellite for the US Air Force. Beresheet is slated to reach its destination on the near-side of the moon in mid-April following a two-month journey through 4 million miles (6.5 million km) of space. Spacecraft from several countries, including India’s Moon Impact Probe, Japan’s SELENE orbiter and a European Space Agency orbital probe called SMART 1, have intentionally crashed on the lunar surface. Data will be relayed via the US space agency NASA’s Deep Space Network to SpaceIL’s Israel-based ground station Yehud. At the end of its brief mission, mission controllers plan to simply shut down the spacecraft, according to SpaceIL officials, leaving Beresheet as the latest piece of human hardware to litter the lunar landscape.

Source: bd News24 February 22, 2019 03:00 UTC