NASA, Israel Space Agency to cooperate on Beresheet 2 lunar mission
https://www.jpost.com/science/article-730297
FEBRUARY 1, 2023
The Israel Space Agency on Wednesday signed an agreement with NASA for full collaboration on the Beresheet 2 lunar mission
This is a good sign. We've now seen a number of examples of how difficult it is to land on the Moon. I assume that NASA is going to provide engineering evaluations and help.
Original Hebrew announcement has a couple more details:
- educational activities will continue
- most of the hardware was already ordered
- main reason for the pulling of funding is the democratic crisis in Israel. Moris wishes to invest the funds in activities related to that.
(Background - the new government is trying to takeover the Supreme Court and cancel judicial Independence - similar to Hungary / Poland) This joins a string of other companies/investors pulling out over the threat to democracy
https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001446319
That's a lot of engine on the orbiter. Are they intending to use it as an uncrasher (assembled vehicle de-orbits, landers release after some portion of the descent delta-V has been provided, then orbiter re-ascends to orbit)?
They switched to a higer degree/level of redundancy compared to the previous mission.
