The reason for the fall of the Israeli module when landing on the moon has become known.

Engineers of the Israeli company SpaceIL,who developed the “Bereshit” lunar landing module, found out the reason for the apparatus’s crash on our planet’s satellite on April 11th. As it turned out, the main reason was not in the module engine, as previously assumed, but in the software malfunction of the on-board computer of the device after the execution of the “erroneous command”, which led to a “chain reaction”, the company’s Twitter message says.

"It seems that while boarding the computerThe apparatus received the wrong command, which caused a kind of chain reaction. It simultaneously led to the disconnection of the main engine “Bereshita” and prevented us from re-enabling it, ”reports SpaceIL microblog

It should be noted that the Israeli teamnevertheless, it was possible to restart the module engines, which led to an increase in the speed of the apparatus’s fall to 475 kilometers per hour, and by that time it was already only 150 meters from the lunar surface. This led to the loss of the probe, since during this time the launched main engine of Bereshita simply could not brake it to a sufficiently low speed.

As the engineers of the Israeli company point out,The preliminary results of data analysis show that the failure was of a software nature, and not a hardware one. In the operating system "Bereshita" there were still unnamed errors that led to the "freezing" of the system and disabling landing engines. The company is set to report the final findings of the incident investigation in the coming weeks.

Despite the failure, the head of SpaceIL Morris KahnHe said that he would allocate funds for the creation of the second version of Bereshita, in order to carry out the first landing of a private spacecraft on the lunar surface in the next 2-3 years. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also expressed his support, promising that Tel Aviv will more actively support SpaceIL initiatives, including the launch of Bereshita-2, in the future. In addition, he did not rule out the possibility of Israel creating its own space program.

It should be noted that this is not the firstsoftware error of the spacecraft in history, which eventually led to its death. For example, the similar fate of Bereshita was shared by the Japanese Hitomi telescope. Due to a critical software failure caused by a random typo and an error in the program code, it exploded. At one time, for similar reasons, the modules Spiaparelli and Mars Climate Orbiter fell on the same Mars.

You can discuss the news in our Telegram-chat.