First ever private moon landing fails

The first ever attempt to private moon landing has failed horribly after two months of its commercial launch. The privately funded spacecraft was built by a non-profit organisation of Israel called SpaceIL. Beresheet, a robot which was designed to land on the lunar surface, attempted to land but due to its main engine failure during the process, it crashed. In spite of attempts made by the mission controllers to reboot the spacecraft and restart its engine, the spacecraft crashed and couldn’t complete the landing manoeuvre. The pre-planned landing site for Beresheet was ‘Mare Serenitatis’ which lies in the northern hemisphere of the Moon and is a dark lava-covered site of an ancient volcanic eruption, and also a source of magnetic and gravitational abnormalities. The scientists had planned to use nine engines- one main engine and eight smaller thrusters to control its descent towards the lunar surface. However, the main central engine failed while carrying out the landing manoeuvre. SpaceIL had announced its intention for a privately funded moon landing back in 2011 at an international space conference in Israel. SpaceIL had also promised to share its data with NASA and other space agencies about the mission if it was successful.  Though the mission failed, it was comparatively less expensive than the previous lunar-landing attempts. Thomas Zurbuchen, the Associate Administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate said, "Space is hard, but worth the risks. If we succeeded every time, there would be no reward”. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Israel commented, "If at first you don't succeed, try again". Israel would have been the fourth nation in the world to land in the moon had the mission been successful.