25 minutes, starting 25 km from surface: How the Beresheet landing should unfold

Here’s how the engineers envision the Beresheet landing will unfold.

First, engineers will bring the spacecraft to a height of about 25 kilometers above the moon’s surface, at which point the spacecraft’s sensors will take over automatically, with its engines pointing down so that activating the engines will act as a braking device, slowing the spacecraft from 6,000 kph to 0 kph. The landing gear utilizes lasers to help the spacecraft brake correctly until it reaches a height of 5 meters (16 feet), when the engines will shut off and the spacecraft will hopefully fall to the moon’s surface. Because the moon’s gravity is about a sixth of Earth’s gravity, it is the equivalent of the spacecraft traveling about 80 centimeters in freefall on Earth.

Beresheet will land blindly on the moon, and stray boulders or craters pose a significant risk that could cause the spacecraft to topple over upon landing, SpaceIL CEO Ido Anteby has said. The entire landing process will take about 25 minutes, during which time the spacecraft will be operating automatically and engineers will not be able to correct or change the spacecraft’s movement.

— Melanie Lidman