Israel's Beresheet spacecraft, which was set to land on the moon yesterday, suffered an engine and communications failure, causing it to crash into the lunar surface. Details are still emerging about what exactly went wrong.
SpaceIL and the Israeli Aerospace Agency (IAI), who built and operated Beresheet, have released a few specifics about the spacecraft's last moments. The trouble began when the lander was just 8.7 miles above the lunar surface, and was caused by a vague "techn ...read more
If you’ve been following climate news, you’ve probably heard about an approaching “tipping point” toward climate change — the point of no return after enough small changes brought us to certain disaster.
But what if the opposite were just as likely? One group of researchers thinks that a few small, positive changes could “tip” us back in the right direction. They’re calling them “sensitive intervention points,” ...read more
As the latest monster spring storm spun up over the U.S. Four Corners region on April 10, high winds drove huge amounts of dust all the way north to the Upper Midwest, where it fell as dirty snow.
You can see the low-pressure center of the cyclone spinning counter-clockwise in the animation above of GOES-16 weather satellite images. Below it, watch for the gargantuan plumes of khaki-colored dust being swept up and driven to the northeast.
Also check out the lighter, sand-colored patch ...read more
Israel's Beresheet spacecraft, which was set to land on the moon today, suffered an engine and communications failure, causing it to instead crash into the lunar surface. Details are still emerging about what exactly went wrong.
Within the last five minutes or so of the landing procedure, mission control reported temporarily losing telemetry data before regaining it again. Shortly after, the main engine shut off, but engineers managed to restart it. Then, they reported a communications fa ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine