https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47879538 The Israeli spacecraft - called Beresheet - attempted a soft landing,
but had several technical and communication problems.How hard was it to land?A soft landing on the lunar surface was the major challenge for the Israeli spacecraft.
Key to its success was a British-built engine, developed by Nammo in Westcott, Buckinghamshire.The Leros engine provided the power to get the spacecraft all the way to the Moon, but it also took Beresheet on its final descent.
The 1.5m-tall spacecraft had to rapidly reduce its speed, so a final firing of the engine will in effect slam on the brakes, hopefully taking the spacecraft to a gentle stop.
Rob Westcott, senior propulsion engineer at Nammo, said "We've never used an engine in this kind of application before.
"The big challenge is the fact that the engine is going to have to be switched on and get very hot, then switched off for a short period of time when all that heat is remaining in its thermal mass, and then fired up again, very accurately and very precisely such that it slows the craft down and lands very softly on the surface on the Moon."The process would have taken about 20 minutes.
All of the controls for this were uploaded and performed autonomously with mission control watching on.
