Israel's Moon Lander Crashing Just Before Landing Shows How Dangerous Space Travel Can Be

Back in February, Israel launched Beresheet, the country's first privately funded and built moon lander.

It was expected to touch down just yesterday and begin its experiments, but something went terribly wrong. Beresheet is now just a pile of debris on the Moon.

Apparently the Beresheet lander's main engine shut down just as it was firing to land on the surface, also causing mission control to lose communication with it. Though they managed to get the engine back online, they weren't able to restore communications. That probably means the spacecraft crashed into the lunar surface, rendering it inoperable.

"We had a failure in the spacecraft," Opher Doron, head of Israel Aerospace Industry's space division, said during a live stream. "We unfortunately have not managed to land successfully. We are the seventh country to orbit the Moon, and the fourth to reach the Moon's surface. It's a tremendous achievement up until now."

It's still quite a blow to SpaceIL, the group that launched Beresheet. While the project began under the Google Lunar X Prize competition, they continued development once the deadline passed with no winners in March 2018. Eventually, after spending $100 million on development, it was ready to launch. Or so they thought anyway.

Until the fatal moment, the mission had been proceeding smoothly. Beresheet was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, went into orbit around Earth, and then spent two months travelling out to the Moon. It was only in the ultimate phase of the journey that tragedy occurred.

And this demonstrates exactly why space travel is so dangerous. Though this was a $100 million crash, it was only a lander so there was no cost in human life. But as far as future manned missions are concerned, this is exactly why spacecraft are designed with safety precautions and redundancies.

The Beresheet team, still don't know why the engine misfired. It was crucial to help slow down the spacecraft while making a touch down. And that's just one mechanical failure that could put astronauts in danger.

In the past rockets have blown up on launch when they developed tiny cracks. After all, they're carrying tonnes of volatile fuel for launch, and any tiny flaws can be exacerbated by the heat. If a rocket's guidance system is glitched, it could end up plummeting back to Earth with the astronauts inside, or guide them straight into orbiting space debris it was meant to avoid.

And then there are the natural dangers in space, like cosmic and solar radiation, the psychological effects of prolonged isolation, how viruses and germs behave in microgravity.

Frankly, an astronaut's life is fraught with dangers. And if we want to be able to send them back to the Moon, and on to Mars in one piece, we need to take every precaution to make sure they're safe the entire time.