From Xyza News for Kids
And that’s what Israel’s SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) plan to do after a failed attempt at landing their Beresheet spacecraft on the moon earlier this month. While they managed to successfully launch their moon lander into space and have it orbit around the moon, landing the spacecraft was another story. The spacecraft was less than 500 feet away from the surface of the moon when engineers back on Earth lost communication with it—it later crashed into the surface of the moon. Sad as it was, SpaceIL has already announced that it will build Beresheet 2 and attempt another landing on the moon. And why not give it another try? After all, SpaceIL has come a long way since 2011 when they first attempted to win the Google Lunar X Prize. The Google Lunar X Prize was a competition that awarded a $20 million prize to the company that could land a robot onto the moon and move it at least 1,650 feet. Although no company actually won, SpaceIL partnered up with IAI to continue working on Beresheet. Why?
There was a greater purpose to Beresheet besides winning a competition. According to SpaceIL and IAI, building Beresheet and attempting to land it on the moon was a way for them to advance Israel’s space program, increase understanding of space engineering, and build interest in science, technology, engineering, and math among young people. A few days after the failed attempt, SpaceIL announced that they’ll be working on Beresheet 2 and attempting another moon landing, despite the long and difficult road ahead. Hey, we don’t know about you, but we love their “Let’s try again!” attitude. After all, you learn from failures, right?
How have you learned from a failure?
