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fredag 5 april 2019

Kuumodulin sieppaus kuun vetovoiman piiriin onnistunut tänään 4.4. aamupäivällä 2019.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israeli-lunar-lander-slips-into-orbit-around-the-moon/

A small Israeli spacecraft executed a critical rocket firing Thursday, easing out of a highly elliptical Earth orbit and into one around the moon. It sets the stage for an automated landing attempt April 11.
The spacecraft is the first privately funded, non-superpower lunar lander. 
"The lunar capture is an historic event in and of itself, but it also joins Israel in a seven-nation club that has entered the moon's orbit," said Morris Kahn, chairman of SpaceIL, the non-profit that brought the Beresheet moon landing mission to fruition. "A week from today we'll make more history by landing on the moon, joining three super powers who have done so. Today I am proud to be an Israeli."
 Launched February 21 as a secondary payload aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the robotic Beresheet's main engine fired seven times over the past few weeks to raise the high point of its orbit to an altitude just past the moon's orbit 240,000 miles away.
 For Thursday's maneuver, a six-minute burn began at 10:18 a.m. ET, reducing Beresheet's velocity relative to the moon by about 620 miles per hour, just enough to allow lunar gravity to capture the spacecraft. The burn was designed to put the craft into an orbit with a low point of about 310 miles and a high point around 6,213 miles.
The firing was critical because without it, Beresheet would have sailed past the moon into a useless orbit around the sun, bringing the mission to a disappointing end.
But the rocket firing went smoothly, setting the stage for landing on a broad plain known as Mare Serenitatis on April 11. If successful, Israel will join the United States, Russia and China as only the fourth nation to land an operational spacecraft on the moon.