WASHINGTON — As India prepares to launch its second lunar lander mission, the fate of a second Israeli lander is doubtful after the organization developing it lost a serious source of funding.
India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is scheduled to launch July 14 on a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark 3, also referred to as LVM-3, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre. The spacecraft will steadily go from a geostationary transfer orbit to a low lunar orbit, from which Chandrayaan-3 will descend to the lunar surface.
Chandrayaan-3 is analogous to India’s first lunar lander flown as a part of the Chandrayaan-2 mission, which crashed attempting a soft landing in September 2019. Chandrayaan-3 incorporates several revisions, reminiscent of additional fuel, based on the investigation into the failed landing.
That crash took place five months after Beresheet, a spacecraft originally developed by Israeli non-profit organization SpaceIL to compete for the Google Lunar X Prize, crashed attempting its own lunar landing. SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries, which built the spacecraft, later said the lander crashed because one among its inertial measurement units malfunctioned.
SpaceIL announced its intent to pursue a second mission, called Beresheet 2. It will be significantly different from the unique mission, with two smaller landers deployed from an orbiter. The mission had been slated to launch in 2025, a date confirmed in a January 2023 announcement of a joint statement of intent between the Israel Space Agency and NASA to cooperate on Beresheet 2. NASA agreed to supply an instrument and communications support for the mission.
That schedule, and the mission itself, is now in query. Just like the first mission, SpaceIL projected using philanthropic donations to fund Beresheet 2. Nonetheless, in May a gaggle of donors announced they were halting future payments to the project after spending $45 million, nearly half its estimated $100 million cost.
In an announcement representing the donors, Morris Kahn, a billionaire who also supported the unique Beresheet mission, said the choice to halt future payments was not related to any problems with Beresheet 2. “These times obligate us to take a position our resources and time in other philanthropic projects,” he stated.
SpaceIL said on the time it could seek alternative funding to proceed the mission, but has provided no updates on those efforts since then. The organization didn’t reply to questions July 10 in regards to the status of Beresheet 2.
In a June 27 presentation on the European Lunar Symposium, Dan Blumberg, chairman of the Israel Space Agency, said work on Beresheet 2 was continuing for now. “We would like to do greater than we did within the previous one,” he said, including enhanced opportunities for international cooperation. Along with the NASA agreement, SpaceIL has an agreement with the German agency DLR, which is able to provide a navigation system for the lander.
He also emphasized educational outreach for the mission. Students can have opportunities to manage the orbiter during its two-year mission, choosing regions on the surface to photograph, he said.
Blumberg hinted at SpaceIL’s financial problems in his transient talk, but didn’t go into details about funding for the mission. “There’s a funding issue that we’re still coping with,” he said. “But we’re getting there.”