We are rather downbeat here -- reluctant to report that the Israeli space agency's robotic moon lander Beresheet has failed. Didn't "stick the soft landing". It apparently smashed into the lunar surface, going almost 300 miles an hour, and is now a ship-wreck -- lost.
More as we have it -- but Matt Damon -- as Whatley -- gets it exactly right, in "The Martian" -- when he utters the bit of narration in the headline, above. Here's what's known at the moment, and an excerpt:
. . . .A small spacecraft that has captured the imagination and excitement of people in Israel and around the world appears to have crashed on the moon.
“We have a failure of the spacecraft,” said Opher Doron, the general manager of Israel Aerospace Industries’ space division, which collaborated on building the spacecraft. The mood at the control center was somber but still celebratory. . . .
Despite modest science goals, the mission generated widespread interest. The Israeli Airports Authority Thursday included Beresheet on its flight board, listing its destination as "the moon". . . .
So it goes. Space is. . . indeed hard. No "do-overs" -- and that is. . . unlike here on Earth, among humans, ones that care about one another. . . smile.
नमस्ते
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