Category Archives: The Moon

The non-profit volunteer Israeli organization SpaceIL announced last week that they had contracted SpaceX to launch a small spacecraft in December on a Falcon 9 rocket . The craft will land on the Moon in February: We Have a Launch and Landing Dates!

Over the past several years, SpaceIL has raised nearly $90M from donors to support the project. SpaceIL is partnering with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) to complete the construction and preparation of the lander.

The lander has a mass of 600 kilograms (1,322 pounds).

The spacecraft’s design and development process, which involved intensive work of engineers, scientists and team members, began in 2013 and continued until last year, when its construction at the IAI MABAT Plant commenced. The spacecraft, which weighs only about 600 kilograms, is considered the smallest to land on the moon. It is 1.5 meters, or over 4.9 feet high, 2 meters or 6 and a half feet in diameter, and the fuel it will carry will comprise some 75 percent of its total weight. Its maximum speed will reach more than 10 km per second (36,000 kilometers, or nearly 22,370 miles, per hour).

SpaceIL’s spacecraft will be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It will be the secondary payload, launched with other satellites.

*The spacecraft as it will be packaged for flight*

The spacecraft’s trip to the Moon will not be direct:

From the moment of its launch, it will begin a long, complex flight course. The spacecraft will disengage from the launch rocket at an altitude of 60,000 kilometers, or 37,282 miles, and will begin orbiting Earth in elliptical orbits. Upon receipt of a command from the control room, the spacecraft will enter a higher altitude elliptical orbit around Earth, which will reach a point near the moon. At this point, it will ignite its engines and reduce its speed to allow the moon’s gravity to capture it. It will then begin orbiting the moon, until the appropriate time to begin the landing process. This process will be executed autonomously by the spacecraft’s navigation control system. The entire journey, from launch to landing, will last approximately two months.

*The SpaceIL lander will get to the Moon via several orbits of increasing widths.*

The SpaceIL team describes the mission of the project:

Upon its landing on February 13, 2019, the spacecraft, carrying the Israeli flag, will begin taking photos and video of the landing site and will measure the moon’s magnetic field as part of a scientific experiment conducted in collaboration with Weizmann Institute. The data will be transmitted to the IAI control room during the two days following the landing.

SpaceIL was the only Israeli contestant in the international Google Lunar XPRIZE competition. To win the first prize of $20 million, the participants were required to land an unmanned spacecraft on the moon. The competition ended officially with no winner on March 31, when Google announced that it would no longer sponsor it.

After succeeding in raising the critical funds to continue its activity, SpaceIL announced that it was determined to continue on its mission and to launch its spacecraft by the end of the year, regardless of the competition. Concurrently, the non-profit is continuing its efforts to raise the funds necessary to complete this mission.

SpaceIL aims to set in motion an “Apollo effect” in Israel: To encourage the next generation of Israeli children to choose to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); to change their perception of these subjects; to generate a sense of capability; and to allow them to dream big dreams even in our small country. The non-profit aims to change the discourse in Israel and to encourage boys and girls to regard science, engineering, technology and math as exciting opportunities for their future. In recent years, SpaceIL has ignited the imagination of about 900,000 children nationwide, with the help of a broad network of volunteers.

You can follow the progress of the SpaceIL project at the SpaceIL blog.

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History, Space Arts, The Moon

Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean dies at 86

May 26, 2018 TopSpacer 1 Comment

Astronaut, Moon walker and artist, Alan Bean has passed away at the age of 86 following an illness that came on two weeks ago while traveling : Alan Bean Family Obituary Statement | NASA

Bean was the lunar pilot on the Apollo 12 mission and he and mission commander Pete Conrad explored the Moon’s Ocean of Storms in November 1969.

Bean became an accomplish artist after retiring from the astronaut corps. See galleries of his works at Alan Bean Art. He had been allowed to keep the name patch from his Apollo EVA suit and it turned out to be saturated with space dust. He would crush a tiny bit of the patch into the paints used for his lunar renderings.

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Another NASA video about Bean:

Space Science, The Moon

Video: A LRO tour of the Moon in 4K

April 9, 2018 TopSpacer

Here is a video tour of important sites on the Moon as seen in the imagery and sensor data collected by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) since it reached the Moon in September of 2009: NASA — A Tour of our Moon

From the caption:

Take a virtual tour of the Moon in all-new 4K resolution, thanks to data provided by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. As the visualization moves around the near side, far side, north and south poles, we highlight interesting features, sites, and information gathered on the lunar terrain.

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Astronomy, The Moon

Video: Watch the Moon rotate in a time-lapse lunar day

March 18, 2018 TopSpacer

Pink Floyd notwithstanding, there is no “Dark side of the Moon” any more than there is a dark side of the earth. The Moon rotates just like earth does, continually changing which half of the sphere is in sunlight and which half in darkness. Our celestial companion keeps one face turned towards us as it orbits around the earth, which means it takes a month rather than 24 hours to make its full 360 degree rotation. Here is a compilation of images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) showing how the Moon would appear if you could sit fixed on a line between the Moon and the sun for a month: APOD: 2018 March 18 – Rotating Moon from LRO

From the caption:

Rotating Moon from LRO
Video Credit: LRO, Arizona State U., NASAExplanation: No one, presently, sees the Moon rotate like this. That’s because the Earth’s moon is tidally locked to the Earth, showing us only one side. Given modern digital technology, however, combined with many detailed images returned by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a high resolution virtual Moon rotation movie has been composed. The above time-lapse video starts with the standard Earth view of the Moon. Quickly, though, Mare Orientale, a large crater with a dark center that is difficult to see from the Earth, rotates into view just below the equator. From an entire lunar month condensed into 24 seconds, the video clearly shows that the Earth side of the Moon contains an abundance of dark lunar maria, while the lunar far side is dominated by bright lunar highlands. Currently, over 20 new missions to the Moon are under active development from four different countries, most of which have expected launch dates either this year or next.

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Space participation, Space Systems, The Moon

Video: Driving the Audi Lunar Quattro

March 10, 2018 TopSpacer

Jonny Smith of the Fully Charged Show on line program visited the Part Time Scientists group in Berlin, which is partnering with Audi and Vodafone on a private mission to the Moon. In this video, Smith gets to drive the Audi Lunar Quattro, “a remote controlled solar powered electric moon buggy”.

PT Scientists began as a team competing for the Google Lunar XPRIZE, which ended without any winners, However, like several other GLXP teams, a commercial company emerged from the effort and will continue to pursue lunar ventures.