이스라엘 최초, 민간 세계 최초인 달 착륙선 발사 VIDEO: Why It'll Take Israel's Lunar Lander 8 Weeks to Get to the Moon/ 日 탐사선 하야부사2, 소행성 류구 착지 후 이륙 Hayabusa2 touches down on asteroid, shoots it
Why It'll Take Israel's Lunar Lander 8 Weeks to Get to the Moon
By Mike Wall
An Israeli moon lander just took to the skies, but we'll all have to wait nearly two months for its historic touchdown try.
The robotic lander, called Beresheet, launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket yesterday evening (Feb. 21) from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. If everything goes according to plan, Beresheet will zip around Earth for about six weeks in ever-widening orbits before heading toward its final destination. The craft will arrive in lunar orbit in early April and attempt a landing on the 11th of that month.
An artist's depiction of the Beresheet lander on the moon.(Image: © SpaceIL)
이스라엘 최초, 민간 세계 최초인 달 착륙선 발사 두달 뒤 착륙 이스라엘에서 만들어진 달 착륙선이 22일 오후1시(한국시간) 성공적으로 우주에 발사돼 인간의 달 여행에 관한 여러 기록 성취를 앞두고 있다. ‘창세기’를 뜻하는 히브리어 베레쉬트 호가 예정대로 4월11일 달 고요의 바다에 착륙하면 이스라엘 제작 및 민간 제작품으로서는 사상 처음으로 달 표면에 내리는 우주선이 된다. 소련 1959년, 미국 1962년 및 중국 2013년 순으로 무인 우주선이 달에 착륙했던 만큼 베레쉬트가 성공하면 이스라엘은 네 번째 달 착륙선 국가가 된다. 소련, 미국, 중국의 경우와는 달리 베세쉬트 우주선은 국가 기관이 아닌 민간 조직이 만들고 발사를 주선했다. 따라서 수십 개의 달 착륙 우주선을 제치고 ‘민간 세계 1호’가 된다. 강국도 아닌 이스라엘, 그것도 국가 차원이 아닌 비영리 민간 조직이 주관한 베레쉬트의 달 여행은 그래서 구차하게 들리는 사연이 많다.
본격적인 우주선 탐사 임무는 10억 달러 이상이 들어간다. 돈에 여유가 없는 달 착륙선 베레쉬트 호는 자체 발사 추진 로켓을 바랄 수 없어 미국 일론 머스크의 민간 우주기업 spaceX의 로켓 팔콘9를 빌려 탔다. 또 팔콘9 상부에 단독 적재 장착된 것이 아니라 인도네시아 통신위성 및 미 공군 위성과 동승해 비용을 아꼈다. 스페이스엑스의 팔콘9는 2년 전 처음으로 1단계 분리 후 지구 재진입 때 불에 타버리지 않고 원형 그대로 바다 플랫폼 착지에 성공했다. 즉 다음 발사에 재사용될 수 있는 명물인 것이다. 21일 밤 11시 미 플로리다주 케이프 커네브럴 공군기지에서 베레쉬트 등을 싣고 우주로 떠난 팔콘9는 3번째 재사용이었다. 발사에 이어 베레쉬트는 말 그대로 ‘완행’으로 우주 공간을 달려 비용을 아낀다. 1960년대 미국 아폴로 우주선이 사흘이면 도달했던 달 궤도의 진입에 두 달이 걸리는 것이다. 지구에서 38만 ㎞ 떨어진 달을 직진하지 못하고 지구 주위를 수십 번 빙빙 돌면서 달 중력장 속으로 들어가는데 그 비행거리가 무려 650만 ㎞다. 국가 차원이 아닌 민간 차원에서 달에 가는 길은 초창기인 지금 이처럼 멀고도 험하다. 【서울=뉴시스】 |
edited by kcontents
Beresheet will end up putting about 4 million miles (6.5 million kilometers) on its odometer when all is said and done. That's more than any other moon-landing mission, said the spacecraft's builders, the nonprofit group SpaceIL and the company Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).
Beresheet's lengthy stay in Earth orbit may seem surprising. After all, China's Chang'e 4 farside lander reached lunar orbit just 4.5 days after its Dec. 7 liftoff (though Chang'e 4 didn't actually touch down until Jan. 2).
But the 5-foot-tall (1.5 meters) Beresheet cannot take a direct path to the moon, project team members said, because the lander shared a rocket ride with two other payloads. Also aboard the Falcon 9 last night were an Indonesian communications satellite and an experimental U.S. Air Force craft, both of which are making Earth orbit their home.
The strategy is cost-effective, helping keep Beresheet's total price tag, including launch, at about $100 million — quite low for a mission to another world. But there is a trade-off.
"The problem with that is, it doesn't allow us to choose the orbit completely," Winetraub added. "We have to consider the requirements from the other payloads" on the rocket.
And you can't just jet straight off to the moon from Earth orbit, Winetraub said; the two celestial bodies must be lined up properly before Beresheet — whose name means "in the beginning" in Hebrew" — can make its move.
"The moon is coming around, and we're doing our own orbit, and we need to synchronize everything," Winetraub said. "For that, we need to do something that's called 'phasing loops,' to make sure that the moon comes around in the right position so you can capture with it. And that takes time."
Mission team members won't just be sitting on their hands while they're waiting for this sync-up. The time in Earth orbit will allow them to test Beresheet's various systems and make sure they can track and communicate with the spacecraft. [The 21 Most Marvelous Moon Missions]
"Only after we will be sure that everything is OK, we will jump — make the lunar-capture maneuver, what we call it — and jump to the moon," Yigal Harel, the head of SpaceIL's spacecraft program, said during Wednesday's news conference.
The touchdown process will be fully automated and take about 20 minutes, team members said. Beresheet will land on the moon's near side, within the large basaltic plain called Mare Serenitatis ("Sea of Serenity").
(Image: © SpaceIL)
A successful touchdown would be a huge deal. Beresheet would become the first privately funded craft to land on the moon. And the SpaceIL/IAI team would be the first nonsuperpower entity to pull off the feat: To date, only the Soviet Union, the United States and China have done it.
Beresheet will study the local magnetic field during its lunar approach and its two-Earth-day mission on the moon's surface. It will also investigate lunar craters, project team members have said. But the main mission goal is to inspire young people, especially kids in Israel, to become more interested in science, technology, engineering and math.
Indeed, team members have already met with many kids around the world, to bring the mission — and spaceflight in general — down to Earth.
"It is rocket science, but our goal is to show them that it's not magic — it's something they can understand," SpaceIL co-founder Kfir Damari said during Wednesday's briefing. "If they can understand that, and if they can meet engineers and hear their story and see that they come from all different kinds of backgrounds, they can understand that they themselves can be those who will build the next spacecraft."
Beresheet is toting an Israeli flag and a time capsule. Among the capsule's contents is the "Lunar Library," a collection of materials that includes the full English-language version of Wikipedia. The library is a project of the Arch Mission Foundation, which aims to help preserve human knowledge and culture by storing bits and pieces of it in off-Earth locales.
Beresheet began life as a moon-race robot. SpaceIL is a former competitor in the Google Lunar X Prize, a $30 million contest to put a robot on the moon and have it perform a few basic tasks. The Prize ended in 2018 without a winner, but SpaceIL — and several other former teams, including the American company Moon Express — have kept developing their moon missions.
https://www.space.com/israel-lunar-lander-long-trip-moon.html
Hayabusa2 touches down on asteroid, shoots it
Impactor blasts bits of asteroid into a sample collection cone.
JOHN TIMMER - 2/23/2019,
The timeline of the approach and sampling process.
Today, in an extended Twitter thread and ensuing press conference, JAXA's Hayabusa2 team announced that everything had gone well in gathering an asteroid sample for eventual return to Earth. While we don't yet know about the material it obtained, the Japanese spacecraft has successfully executed all the commands associated with the sample recovery.
The timeline of the approach and sampling process.
日 탐사선 하야부사2, 소행성 류구 착지 후 이륙 일본우주항공연구개발기구는 우주 탐사선 '하야부사2'가 소행성 '류구'에 착지한 뒤 이륙했다는 신호를 포착했다고 발표했습니다. 일본우주항공연구개발기구는 오늘(22일) 오전 6시쯤 하야부사2가 고도 약 500ｍ에서 천천히 하강해 1시간 반쯤 뒤 표면에 닿았다가 상승 중이라는 데이터를 얻은 것으로 알려졌습니다. * 하야부사(매라는 뜻) 2호 하야부사를 잇는 JAXA의 소행성 탐사선으로, 하야부사의 업그레이드 버전인 소행성 탐사선이다. 목적은 162173 류구을 탐사하여 인류의 기원과 물의 기원 등을 알아내어 생명의 기원을 알아내는 것이다. 위키백과 edited by kcontentts 하야부사2는 류구의 적도 부근 바위로 둘러싸인 약 6ｍ의 틈 사이에 착지한 것으로 전해졌습니다.
2014년 12월 발사된 하야부사2는 3년 6개월에 걸쳐 태양 주위를 돌면서 약 30억㎞를 비행해 지난해 6월 류구 상공에 도착했습니다. 주판알 모양인 류구는 원시 소행성 형태로 태양계 형성 초기의 물질을 간직한 것으로 과학자들은 추정하고 있습니다. 하야부사2는 오는 7월 말까지 최대 2차례 류구 착륙을 더 시도한 뒤 내년 말쯤 지구로 돌아올 예정입니다. ytn https://ytn.co.kr/_ln/0104_201902221024325781 |
edited by kcontents
Hayabusa2 has been in space since 2014, and it slowly made its way to an orbit 20km above the surface of the asteroid Ryugu. In late 2018, the spacecraft made a close approach to the asteroid and released two small, solar-powered robots that have been hopping on the surface since. This week has seen the first of what are intended to be several sample-gathering attempts.
The procedure for this is pretty straightforward: Hayabusa2 snuggles up to the asteroid and shoots it. The probe has a sample-gathering "horn" that it can place up against the asteroid's surface. Once it's in place, Hayabusa2 can fire a bullet into the asteroid's surface, blasting material loose that will be gathered by the horn and stored for return to Earth. JAXA, the Japanese space agency, calls its gun a "projector" but admits that the thing it fires is a bullet. JAXA has a webpage that describes some on-Earth testing of the whole system.
If you're going to shoot an asteroid, you're going to need a big bullet.
Enlarge / If you're going to shoot an asteroid, you're going to need a big bullet.JAXA
This obviously requires Hayabusa2 to leave its orbit at 20km and approach the asteroid. Approach is done rather cautiously, with an initial speed of 145 meters/hour, slowing to 36m/hr during the final steps, which means covering 20km took a significant chunk of time. The team monitoring Hayabusa2, however, has confirmed that all the commands planned during the approach were executed appropriately, which indicates that Hayabusa2 now carries the first of several asteroid samples.
The initial samples will be the surface material, which has been exposed to radiation and high energy particles possibly since the formation of the Solar System. But Hayabusa2 also carries a heavier bullet that's intended to blast off the surface material to expose material that's remained protected for billions of years. Ryugu is thought to be rich in water and organic matter, and it could provide a time capsule for the study of these starting materials prior to their incorporation into planets and moons.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/02/hayabusa2-touches-down-on-asteroid-shoots-it/
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