Some issues need to be clarified with reference to the so-called failed Israeli mission to the Moon, which in Italy has been commented by people who, besides not knowing what they write, think that our satellite is a Sunday skating rink for bored vacationers.
The troubles that led to the accident were the components that did not fit in space; the difficulty of tracking the spacecraft; the failed science mission; the limited government help; media manipulations; the U.S. investigative procedure on the suspicion of lunar pollution. Itai Nevo, editor-in-chief of the Davidson Institute website, reveals untold things about the first Israeli mission to the Moon.
On the morning of February 22, 2019, hundreds of thousands of Israelis witnessed the launch of Beresheet (Genesis), the Israeli spacecraft that was about to make history and land on the Moon. The mission was to make Israel the fourth country to have landed a spacecraft on the Moon, but it had many other historic aspects: it was the first privately funded spacecraft to want to touch down on the lunar soil, the smallest and cheapest spacecraft to do so, and the first to be sent to the moon as a “hitchhiker” on another launch. The SpaceX launch vehicle’s primary launcher was an Indonesian communications satellite.
The spacecraft initially made its way to the Moon in increasing elliptical orbits around the Earth, with the transition between each orbit made by manoeuvring the engine for a short period of time, up to a few minutes. On April 4, 2019, it performed the most complicated manoeuvre (other than landing), activating the engine to decelerate and entering orbit around the Moon. A week later and following a few more deceleration manoeuvres, the actual landing began, in which the braking engine was reactivated to enable it to land gently in the Sea of Tranquillity.
At first, everything went well, but in the last ten minutes before landing, a series of malfunctions began that led to the engine shutting down and eventually the spacecraft crashing into the Moon. That same night, SpaceX and the aerospace industry explained that the reason for the accident was the amount of acceleration of the spacecraft, and promised to conduct a detailed investigation and publish the findings. Although the investigation was concluded, the findings were never published in an orderly manner. They are brought here to your knowledge for the first time, taken from www.ynet.co.il.
As with any space crash, the Beresheet crash was not caused by a single technical problem, but by a series of failures. Some of them lay in the original design of the vehicle which, as mentioned above, was very small and was built on a relatively small budget for such space missions: 100 million dollars including launch and operational costs. The other cause was a human error.
As early as the night of the launch, the engineering team announced there was a problem with the star trackers – a pair of cameras designed to photograph the sky, identify certain stars and thus determine the angle of the spacecraft in space – i.e whether it was flying “forward, ” “backward” or “sideways.” This is critically important during engine operation, because an incorrect angle sends the spacecraft into a completely different orbit than planned. Apparently, while pulling away from the launch pad, some dust particles settled on the dark shields that were supposed to protect the star trackers from direct sunlight, and hence they reflected the light and dazzled the cameras.
Early attempts to get around the problem were to use new software instructions, but they were unsuccessful. Engineers, instead, found creative solutions, including tilting the spacecraft sideways during manoeuvres and using accelerometers instead of star trackers in manoeuvres where it was impossible to escape sunlight. These changes forced the ground teams to do a lot of work and also made it difficult to locate the spacecraft, since any distortion could also deviate slightly from its orbit.
A few days after launch, another malfunction occurred when the spacecraft’s computer suddenly rebooted and postponed a planned manoeuvre. The problem continued to accompany the spacecraft on its journey to the Moon, apparently due to a malfunction in the electronic box that acted as a mediator between the computer and the spacecraft systems because of its exposure to intense radiation in space.
This is part of the price paid for a small, lightweight spacecraft with minimal radiation protection and relatively inexpensive components, some of which, like the box itself, were built specifically for the Beresheet mission and were never tested in space.
Another cost for an economical space mission was that there was only one computer in the spacecraft. Software extensions designed to overcome the problems were therefore not stored into the computer’s memory during the activity, but only into the working memory (RAM). As a result, the extensions were deleted each time the computer was started and had to be loaded back again into a command file.
While approaching the lunar surface, with the engine running all the time, the accelerometer – known as the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) – went off. The spacecraft had two of these accelerometers and was performing sufficiently with only one. At that time the team had to make a quick decision, i.e. whether to continue with just one correct one and hope it would not fail, or try to run it layer by layer. The decision was not to waste time.
Owing to the design logic of the spacecraft, however, the operation of an accelerometer briefly blocked the transmission of information from the normal accelerometer. For less than a second, the computer did not receive acceleration data and hence declared the navigation error. In such cases the software restarts. The restart took less than two seconds, but the computer went back into operation without the software extensions which, according to the landing command file, should have loaded for extra safety every minute.
As a result, the computer rebooted continuously, and only after about five of these reboots did the extensions finally arrive as well.
The computer reboot caused the spacecraft’s main engine to shut down, which at that point should have run continuously and slowed the landing down. The computer was supposed to start up the engine immediately, but a malfunction was discovered that the engineering team detected before the startup but could not solve: in order to restart, the engine had to draw power from two sources, but after the startup only one of them worked, and the main engine did not fire.
The spacecraft continued to fall diagonally towards the Moon, with only the small directional engines continuing to operate while maintaining the correct direction. It hit the lunar ground at a speed of over 3,000 km/h and fragmented into many pieces.
As mentioned above, some of Beresheet’s problems were caused by the use of relatively inexpensive components, not all of which had been tested on other space missions. Even the accelerometers, which worked well throughout the mission until that major malfunction, were not designed specifically for space missions, and information about their operation on satellites was partial and incomplete. The fear of defects in their operation meant that they were present in duplicate numbers on the spacecraft.
Ofer Doron, who until a few months ago was the Director of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) that led the project with SpaceIL, said: “On a normal mission, we would not launch the spacecraft in such a situation. There was no redundancy of components and system. Many of the components were not tested in space and the probability of a successful landing was very low and we were not ready enough. Usually we do not launch unless there is a high probability of success, but the spacecraft was launched with small and inexpensive means. This is how it works in this area. The task force was also not properly trained, although they did a lot of training and preparation. In a normal satellite we would delay the launch, but when you are a hitchhiker and not the main cargo, there is no such option. We decided that it was enough and came out with a lower level of adequacy than we wanted.”
Doron, however, pointed out that the very construction of the spacecraft in a short time and partial operation, and even the presence of the problems that were discovered, were a huge achievement. “A very valuable group of people made a supreme effort to complete a mission on the brink of the impossible and came very close to the goal. They deserve considerable appreciation. The landing failed not because of human error, but because of a sequence of concatenate events.”
During the mission, Ido Antebi, CEO of SpaceIL pointed out. “The spacecraft was not designed to withstand two independent failures, otherwise it would not have cost a hundred million dollars but a billion. We performed all possible tests and simulations before the mission, otherwise we would not have launched it if we were not ready.”
Would avoiding the operation of the layered accelerometer prevent the sequence of failures and allow a proper landing? It is obviously impossible to know, and other problems may have arisen. In the sequence of landing events, shortly after the accelerometer was instructed, reminders were made to avoid it. Was it a human error? Was it impossible to share information between teams? Was it an accumulation of problems in the spacecraft? It depends on who you ask. One thing is certain: during Beresheet’s seven weeks, the team worked much harder than expected because of completely unexpected problems.
In addition to the initial problems and difficulties with the star tracker, the team had a fundamental problem in knowing exactly where the spacecraft was – a problem not shared with the media and the public. The spacecraft’s exact location is calculated by communicating with it, i.e. measuring how long its signal takes to be received by ground stations and thus determining its distance from us. Based on the measurement of the Doppler effect, the change in radio wave frequency, its speed and direction are calculated. This data, together with the angles calculated with the help of the star trackers, provides the information needed to operate the engines in manoeuvring.
Communication was through the Swedish company SSC’s antenna system, but it was accompanied by many malfunctions, especially in the initial weeks, and data required repeated checks. This was compounded by the problem with the star trackers, because their operation sometimes required the spacecraft to rotate on an axis during a course that might change its orbit slightly. It so happened that determining each position required many more hours of work than expected. Work on software extensions also required significant time investment. Engineers cut back or cancelled vacations because of the workload and more than once even slept in an aerospace facility.
The workload on the team increased especially in the last week, where many manoeuvres were planned in orbit around the Moon. In addition to the engineering team’s fatigue, the congestion of routine work led to the cancellation of ground team exercises planned during the mission. Would these practices have been able to expose and counteract in advance the failures that led to the accident? It is impossible to know. The number of possible scenarios is huge, and there was no certainty that the scenario that occurred would have arisen.
In addition to the challenge of landing on the Moon, a science mission led by Prof. Oded Aharonson of the Weizmann Institute of Science was also initially added. The mission relied on a magnetometer to measure local magnetic fields in an effort to better understand the Moon’s geology and its formation processes. The magnetometer was to measure magnetic fields primarily during the landing phases as the spacecraft passed over the Moon at a relatively low altitude, while at the same time transmitting the information in real time, with images, through NASA’s communications network.
Aaronson said: “We turned the magnetometer on for testing early in the mission and it worked well during landing. We got data above 20 miles, but not the most interesting measurements from lower altitudes. The spacecraft probably continued to measure but no longer transmitted data. We were unable to extract useful information from the data obtained. Because the Moon’s magnetic fields are relatively weak and the spacecraft itself created a strong field. Hence the magnetometer operated partially outside its planned range, thus making it difficult to extract information from the data and draw new conclusions about the Moon.”
Another NASA science device was added to the mission shortly before launch, following an agreement with the U.S. Space Agency to use its communications network. The device was a reflector, a small dome five centimetres in diameter, lined with special mirrors designed to return a laser signal from the Moon. It allowed to determine the exact height of the satellite and obviously the position of the spacecraft. For several weeks, Aaronson and satellite operators scanned the crash site in an attempt to detect a laser reflection from the reflector, but in vain.
Before launch, the Arch Lunar Library was installed in the spacecraft.
The Arch Lunar Library is the first in a series of lunar archives by the Arch Mission Foundation in Los Angeles, designed to preserve the records of our civilization for up to billions of years. As mentioned above, it was installed in the Beresheet lunar module.
The Lunar Library contains a 30-million-page archive of human history and civilization, covering all subjects, cultures, nations, languages, genres and time periods. The Library is housed inside a 100-gram nanotechnology device that is similar to a 120 mm DVD. Nevertheless, it is actually composed of 25 nickel disks, each only 40 microns thick, which were made for AMF by NanoArchival. The first four layers contain over 60,000 analog images of book pages, photographs, illustrations and documents, engraved from 150 to 200 dpi, at increasing levels of magnification, by optical nanolithography. The first analog layer is the Front Cover and is visible to the naked eye. It contains 1,500 pages of text and images, as well as holographic logos and diffractive text, and can be easily read with an optical microscope at 100 times magnification or even with a lower power magnifier. Each of the next three analog layers contain 20,000 images of text pages and photos at 1000 times magnification and require a slightly more powerful microscope to be read. Each letter on these layers is the size of a bacillus bacterium.
In the Library’s analog layers there is a specially designed manual that teaches over a million concepts in images and corresponding words in major languages, as well as the content of the Rosetta Wearable disc, from the Long Now Foundation, which teaches the linguistics of thousands of idioms. This is followed by the manual, a series of documents that teach the technical specifications, file formats, and scientific and engineering knowledge needed to access, decode, and understand the digital information encoded in the Library’s deepest layers. Also in the analog layers there are several private archives, including an Israeli time capsule for SpaceIL, containing Israeli culture and history, songs, and children’s drawings. Beneath the Library’s analog layers there are 21 layers of 40-micron-thick nickel sheets, each containing a DVD master.
The digital layers collectively contain over 100 GB of highly compressed datasets, which decompress into nearly 200 GB of content, including English Wikipedia text and XML, as well as tens of thousands of PDFs of books, including fiction, non-fiction, a reference library, textbooks, technical and scientific manuals, etc. The digital layers also contain the Long Now Foundation’s PanLex datasets, a language key for 5,000 languages with 1.5 billion mutual translations.
According to our team of scientific advisors, based on imaging data provided by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Lunar Library is currently believed to have survived the Beresheet crash and be intact on the Moon.
AMF even made a significant contribution to SpaceIL for the lunar launch. AMF is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to create a cultural backup of Earth on other celestial bodies. AMF stated: “Preserving and disseminating knowledge in time and space is the most important task of mankind.”
About four months after the accident, the U.S. magazine “Wired” reported that the organization had also added samples of human DNA and water bears (tardigrades), tiny creatures known to be highly resilient and able to survive in extreme conditions.
In the beginning, the SpaceIL team knew nothing about the initiative of the organization’s U.S. founder, Nova Spivack, to add biological material to the mission. Its apparent presence in the spacecraft raised suspicions of lunar pollution for such presence. The story of the water tardigrades was widely published, but it was announced that the U.S. Civil Aviation Administration (Federal Aviation Administration) had started an investigation against SpaceIL and SpaceX, which launched the spacecraft, even though there was no evidence of biological material from the beginning.
SpaceIL had to hire legal counsel for this purpose in Israel and the United States of America, at a considerable cost. The proceedings ended a few months later without any action being taken against the companies, even after Spivak himself explained in a letter that he was solely responsible.
“The founder of the Arch Foundation stated in various forums that the association was not aware of the problem” – SpaceIL said in a response: “as stated, to date we do not know whether there were indeed tardigrades on the spacecraft. FAA’s inspection ascertained that the organisation was operating correctly and in accordance with state-of-the-art and accepted procedures.”
In an interview Spivak said: “The issue was exaggerated beyond proportion. The United States of America left nearly a hundred bags of human excrement on the Moon. The Chinese landed seeds and grew a plant on the Moon last year. Many space ships crashed into the Moon and polluted it with toxic fuels. Tardigrades are epoxy [epoxy: group containing an oxygen atom bridging two carbon atoms], not alive, and minimal. If a person signs on paper with a ballpoint pen, the ink in that signature contains more contaminating biological material. It was nothing more than a poetic ‘signature’ from the Earth.”
Spivak, however, refused to explicitly confirm that there was actually biological material in the spacecraft. “I cannot prove that there were or were not tardigrades. I can say that the possibility of having live tardigrades on the Moon is zero. The mystery can only be solved by visiting the Moon and examining the remains of the Beresheet and the Library.”
He added: “We helped SpaceIL because the tardigrade story brought Beresheet to the general public’s attention and sparked positive interest among children and students, who still continue to wonder if there are water bears on the Moon. I think that, overall, the event had a positive impact on SpaceIL in terms of image and place in history. We are their big supporters and would love to help them return to the Moon in the future as well. They did nothing wrong and the law was not broken. There was some confusion and I apologize for that.”
Not everyone agrees with him. Doron said: “This is a hallucinatory event and it is not clear to me how he did not end up in jail”. Yigal Harel, who was Head of the spacecraft project at SpaceIL, added: “It is very annoying and it was a stain on the project and on me, and it did not follow the spirit of Beresheet. The engineering team was not involved in determining the disk content – we just had to make sure it met the launch requirements for space. If there were tardigrades on the disk, I guess they did not survive the explosion caused by the fuel flare during the accident”.
Harel added that one of the reasons for closing the procedure was SpaceIL‘s orderly work with the U.S. Civil Aviation Administration. “They have always seen our seriousness, and when that deception occurred, they took that into account.”
SpaceIL was founded in 2011 to participate in Google’s Lunar X-Prize competition, which offered a 20 million dollar prize for a private initiative to land an unmanned spacecraft on the Moon. At the same time as developing early versions of the spacecraft, the three founders, Yariv Bash, Kfir Damari and Jonathan Weintraub, also worked to make SpaceIL an educational association, using the spacecraft project to encourage children and youth to study science and engineering.
In late 2014 tycoon Maurice Kahn, who helped the founders in the early years, decided to increase his investment in the venture and help recruit additional donors. This enabled the association to hire a professional team of space engineers and carry the venture forward. SpaceIL was the first participant in the competition to sign a launch contract with SpaceX of Elon Musk (a South African entrepreneur with Canadian citizenship, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen). Works continued in March, with the assistance of the aerospace industry, and the spacecraft was built in Musk’s facilities.
By the end of 2017 the budget was exhausted and the road to the Moon seemed farther away than ever. Works continued at IAI’s expense, but the association accumulated a debt to the facility of about 10 million dollars. In early 2018, another blow to the enterprise came when Google announced – after several delays – the end of the competition without a winner. The prize amount, which was part of the enterprise’s planned budget, was deducted from it, and the project was on the verge of collapse. SpaceIL and IAI were seeking additional donors and also asked the government to increase aid.
Google’s competition rules enabled groups to receive government assistance of up to ten percent of the cost of the venture. The Ministry of Science initially pledged to support the spacecraft with 5.5 million new shekels, which at the time accounted for 10 percent of the estimated budget, but paid only about two million new shekels.
When further assistance was requested, the Ministry increased its planned aid, adding 7.25 million new shekels, i.e. just under ten million in total. But the spacecraft’s budget had meanwhile reached 100 million dollars and hence the government could have quadrupled its contribution – and even more so after the decision was made to look outside as well.
Although the Ministry of Science and Technology and Minister Ophir Akunis were very proud of their achievements at the beginning, it now becomes clear that, at the moment of truth, the Ministry did not respond to calls for further increasing the budget and rescuing the Israeli spacecraft project. Minister Akonis, who even flew to Florida to witness a close-range launch, stressed the importance of Beresheet to the State of Israel and repeatedly emphasized his Ministry’s contribution to the project, which he said was within the limits of competition.
However, the one who ultimately rescued Beresheet was still Morris Kahn, who increased the donation amount, out of his own pocket, to over 40 million dollars and made it conditional upon IAI waiving its debt. In the end, IAI agreed on two conditions: full ownership and rights to all of Beresheet’s knowledge and full cooperation in managing the mission, as well as its public relations and publicity.
The Director of the Israel Space Agency at the Ministry of Science and Technology, Avi Blasberger, pointed out in response that Bereisheet’s budget increase of over seven million new shekels in 2018 was about one-tenth of the Space Agency’s budget and added to many actions by the Agency and the Ministry of Science. He said: “Our budget increase was an important part of Kahn’s decision to continue the project. We also contributed with one million new shekels to fund the association’s educational activities and 700,000 new shekels to fund the science mission. We also signed an agreement for them with NASA to use the deep space network, which was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to them and they would not have reached it without our efforts. We are also working with NASA to assist them in their next mission”.
The Ministry of Science and Technology further stated: “The Space Agency has initiated and promoted, in cooperation with SpaceIL an educational activity to encourage young men and women to promote exhibitions on space and science and technology studies, as well as the dissemination of SpaceIL‘s activities in the Ministry of Science’s major events, including Israel Space Week, and in various educational programs. The extensive cooperation with the Ministry of Education and SpaceIL basically serves as a power multiplier for the main goal of creating a Beresheet effect in the younger generation.” The Ministry also said that Minister Akonis pledged to double the support for the possible Beresheet 2 raising it to 20 million new shekels.
The Beresheet mission is officially designed to demonstrate Israel’s technological capabilities and create a public impact similar to the Apollo effect of half a century ago, i.e. the great interest that young people in the United States showed in science and technology following the success of the first manned missions to the Moon. Indeed, much of the project’s efforts were focused on public relations, starting with a clear media strategy, namely to produce success at all costs.
Doron said: “With a view to creating solidarity, we built a media campaign designed to turn the spacecraft into something belonging to all of us, with the goal of involving the entire State of Israel in the project. This is the reason why we decided, inter alia, to share – with the public – the problems and difficulties that arose during the mission.”
“The communication strategy was based on the assumption that there was a reasonable possibility we would not be able to land on the Moon, and that we might not even reach it. On the launch date – and even before a precise one was set – we organized an event to introduce the spacecraft to the media, launched a campaign to choose a name for the module, and selected materials to be sent to the Lunar Library.
“The ceremony for inserting the information disk, including the library, into the spacecraft, was a presentation to the media. The disk was installed into the spacecraft a few days later by the technical team. The public did not know that in order to save costs, the plane that brought Beresheet to the United States stopped in Liege, Belgium, to unload a shipment of vegetables.”
Even during the mission, many resources were invested in promoting the media strategy and public relations. Doron added: “The spacecraft ‘selfie’ with the Earth was intended to be a victory image in case we did not reach the Moon and, in order to photograph it, we negotiated with the U.S. Civil Aviation Administration, which initially did not approve the near-Earth photograph, but eventually responded positively. The ‘selfie’ has already had a significant impact on us because it had to ‘waste’ a computer command file.”
In October 2018, about four months before the launch, a cooperation agreement was signed with NASA, which allowed SpaceIL to use the U.S. Agency space network to communicate with the vehicle in a relatively wide bandwidth and transmit a lot of information in a short time with advanced antennas at several sites around the world. The engineering teams were required to make a huge effort to establish the communication interface with the NASA system in a short time. One of the engineers who worked on the project said: “We did a two-year job in four months”.
Doron added: “The insistence on investing a lot of resources in the communication network with NASA’s was mainly to enable us to send images from the landing in real time. We made many efforts and preparations to get a successful message even if the success was not complete.” In the end, the decision may have been right: the “selfie” of the start of landing on the Moon, was the closest thing to landing from the mission.
“Even though we did not land, the mission was a huge success,” Doron concluded. “Both the Americans and the Russians failed many times before landing softly. The Chinese were the only ones who succeeded the first time, and we were the only fools who had the audacity to attempt a landing on such a first-ever mission. In spite of the many difficulties, we have come a long way.”
Despite justified anger over Spivak’s move and the price of his conduct, there may be something in his remarks about the media effect of the tardigrade affair. The debate over whether the “water bears” can continue to live on the Moon seems to have reached a wider audience than those generally interested in space missions, including children and young people. After the revelations about the Beresheet mission, the issue of life elsewhere continues to resonate on social media even today.
SpaceIL also wanted to emphasize the mission’s educational impact: “Beresheet brought the State of Israel to an unprecedented achievement and made the country the seventh in the world to orbit the Moon [and I would add, even touch on it]. Although there was no soft landing on the Moon, it is important to remember that the Beresheets’ main mission was there, on a celestial body. The Israeli Apollo effect achieved unprecedented success insofar as not only did all Israeli children think, learn and dream about space and the Moon. The audacity and engineering capability that the entire team demonstrated in the mission is extraordinary on any global scale.”
Has the Beresheet effect reached the halls of academia as well? The only institution in the country offering undergraduate studies in space engineering is Technion (Israel Institute of Technology).
A review of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering revealed that 110 undergraduate students were admitted to its courses in 2020, up from 97 in the previous year, an increase of about 13% overall. According to Faculty Dean Prof. Tal Shima, the increase may be due to the success, exposure and media coverage of the Israeli mission to the Moon, but he noted that the Faculty has also opened a new program of excellence, in cooperation with the Israel Defence Forces, and is also attracting students.
Besides its educational and public impact, it appears that the Beresheet mission also had a direct impact on space exploration, thus demonstrating it is possible to reach the Moon with a small, inexpensive spacecraft. As Antebi maintained: “When you look at the companies that have won NASA competitions for unmanned spacecraft to the Moon, you see that their budgets for these projects are on our scale: tens of million dollars, not a billion dollars. And thanks to our achievement.”
According to the original plan, SpaceIL was to end space operations upon completion of the Beresheet mission. All engineers received early termination letters, and the association was only to continue its educational activities and exploit the space mission to that effect. However, soon after it became clear that the spacecraft had crashed into the Moon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised: “We will try again. We reached the Moon but we want to land more softly and safely.” Two days later, SpaceIL President Kahn announced: “We are working on Beresheet 2 as of today.” As a result, layoffs were postponed for some of the engineers who had been left temporarily to work on analysing the accident and begin drafting the next report.
Some of the engineers also tried to start new projects based on the knowledge gained with Beresheet. Nevertheless, because the property rights had passed to the aerospace industry and there was no funding for another project, all were eventually dismissed. About two months later, SpaceIL management announced that Beresheet 2 had been cancelled and that “trying to repeat a trip to the Moon is quite challenging.”
Some of Beresheet’s engineers joined other space agencies, while others formed independent space companies or are in the process of doing so.
One of them is Harel, which has recently founded WeSpace, a commercial company that plans to develop innovative vehicles to visit lava caves on the Moon. These are natural caves created as a result of the first volcanic activity on the Moon and have not been explored so far, although they have great potential, for example as a radiation shelter for astronauts. They also hope to find ice, as the caves are not exposed to sunlight.
Harel promised: “We have innovative development in the capacity to reach these places. At such stage there are highly qualified members of SpaceIL working with us voluntarily. Once we manage to raise funds, most of them will join us. The space investment market is huge, and we have an advantage because very few companies are active in deep space – and this is the next frontier.”
Nevertheless, starting in late 2020, it seems that SpaceIL‘s next mission will still be to the Moon. Kfir Damari, one of SpaceIL‘s three founders and vice-President for education. “We are planning a spacecraft very similar to Beresheet, but with more emphasis on science missions, and perhaps with an additional component such as a satellite that will remain in orbit around the Moon. We want value added to the mission beyond the landing itself. The previous experience did not accurately express our perception. Now the assumption is that we do not want to repeat the same task, but to develop and build another spacecraft. It is a completely different challenge.” Jonathan Weintraub, one of the founders of SpaceIL, who is involved in planning the new mission added: “We will carry out a task that will excite and inspire, We have an opportunity to join the international effort to land humans on the Moon, and the question is how Israel can contribute to that.”
Despite not winning the Google competition, SpaceIL received a sort of “consolation prize” of 1 million dollars from the organizers of the aforementioned competition. Last month, the Blavatnik Family Foundation announced an additional 1 million dollar donation to the enterprise. As Damari explained: “The money is earmarked for continued educational activity, and the latest donation is aimed at starting the first works on the next spacecraft. This has enabled us to recruit a new CEO, Shimon Sarid, who will start planning the next mission. Even if we manage to raise money from other sources – such as the State or fees from scientific tests – I imagine that most of the budget will come from philanthropy.”
Beresheet 2 itself could eventually land on the Moon in another form. IAI’s Space facility is partnering with the U.S. company Firefly, which is bidding for the Beresheet spacecraft in a NASA competition to launch unmanned spacecraft to the Moon for resuming manned flights under NASA’s Artemis program.
The U.S. spacecraft is almost identical to the Israeli Beresheet and is based on knowledge and developments that now belong to the aerospace industry. Damari concluded: “We wish them success. We have also developed the spacecraft to advance the knowledge of all mankind.” And I add: to spread it to the Universe through the Lunar Library.
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Advisory Board Co-chair Honoris Causa Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori is an eminent Italian economist and businessman. He holds prestigious academic distinctions and national orders. Mr. Valori has lectured on international affairs and economics at the world’s leading universities such as Peking University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva University in New York. He currently chairs “International World Group”, he is also the honorary president of Huawei Italy, economic adviser to the Chinese giant HNA Group. In 1992 he was appointed Officier de la Légion d’Honneur de la République Francaise, with this motivation: “A man who can see across borders to understand the world” and in 2002 he received the title “Honorable” of the Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France. “
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Is mankind really on the brink of an exciting, but potentially terrifying future?
Some scholars think that this is the case say, but they base their prediction not on what is currently happening in universities and robotics laboratories around the world, but on their belief that a robotic revolution has already taken place.
Ancient religions and myths spoke of many artificially constructed entities. They are often depicted as instruments of protection, but it sometimes happens that they rebel against those who created them with disastrous consequences.
American Rabbi Ariel Bar Tzadok, founder of the Kosher Torah School, stated: “There is a legend that has existed since the dawn of time. I am referring to the Golem. It is an artificial life source from inanimate material that then comes to life. The Golem was created by means of an ancient technology known to the Pharaoh’s magicians, Moses, the rabbis of the Talmud and the rabbis of the Kabbalah in Europe”
They all brought the Golem to life through magic by writing the name of God on the creature’s forehead. Thus the Golem came to life and was a valiant warrior and defender of the People. The Golem was useful until he began to lose control and went mad. At that point, those who had brought him to life were forced to resort to magic again to make him harmless. This is a very interesting tale which makes us think of robots and artificial intelligence.
Another even more cautionary example comes from ancient Greek legends about the god Hephaestus: known as the blacksmith of the gods, he is said to have forged a giant automaton, a robot named Talus with the task of protecting the island of Crete. Hephaestus also created artificial servants to help him in his forge. His most important creation, however, was a woman who, according to legend, changed the fate of mankind forever, namely Pandora. She was forged in clay by Hephaestus who, with the help of goddess Athena, succeeded in animating her through the breath of life, thus making her a living being in her own right. Zeus, however, felt disturbed by that artificially created being and that was the reason why he decided to give her a jar as a gift. As soon as Pandora opened it, all the world’s evils flew away.
The myth of Pandora is becoming increasingly important among artificial intelligence designers. Some fear that an entity endowed with artificial intelligence will take over and turn into a threat. This fear is shared also by Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking.
Although the concept of a machine endowed with human consciousness might make us shudder, in many Eastern religions the judgement changes radically. In Korean shamanism – an ancient religion still practised by many people today – objects can be possessed by sacred spirits imbued with an energy that humans have not. Similarly, those practising the Japanese religion known as Shintoism believe that otherworldly spirits called Kami (objects of worship) can practically live inside any object and give it life.
Shinto priestess Izumi Hasegawa maintained: “Ancient Japanese people, as well as modern people, believe there is a spirit in everything: even a smartphone or an iPhone has a life force as a computer. We believe in the artificial intelligence of a machine. We feel that way and we like it. In this respect we are profoundly different from Westerners for whom a machine is a machine”.
Heather Roff from the Cambridge University stated: “The phrase – Hey, Siri, what’s the weather going to be like today? – is an example of artificial intelligence, i.e. an algorithm that processes natural language, turns it into a computer code that searches the web and provides the data. It has been complicated to be able to process human language. In fact, this goal has been achieved only a few years ago, but with very good results that have also been reached in the field of facial recognition and voice signal coding”.
If we create an entity that behaves like us, and has its own perceptive abilities and personal knowledge of the world, we believe it should be considered an intelligent, aware and responsible entity.
In some ways, our society is in the process of transformation: computers accompany our daily lives and technology is bound to spread ever more. Artificial intelligence that is part of it is set to transform the very fabric of our society. It is certain that we should take a pause to reflect on the kind of intelligence we are creating. What we do know is that we are starting to cede control of some things over to machines without having understood what the consequences are. By designing increasingly smart and intelligent machines, humans could create a new form of life that, over time, will evolve far beyond the purpose that is now useful to us and eventually replace us.
Princeton University, 1950. Pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing was developing a test designed to distinguish man from machine. The test consisted in placing two opposing subjects in front of a screen with no possibility of seeing each other. Since the two players could not see each other, they did not know whether they were human beings or not. If the artificial player managed to mimic a conversation long enough for the opponent to believe he was interacting with a flesh-and-blood human, that player had passed the test.
When Alan Turing first proposed the test in 1950, the usual snobbish bigwigs – that never fail – initially considered it something half way between a nerdy prank and philosophical speculation. The idea that a machine could be mistaken for a human being was unthinkable. But in June 2014 futuristic science fiction became a scientific fact when a computer programme, Chatbot, passed the Turing Test.
Designed to resemble a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy in every way, the chatterbot by the name of Eugene Goostman managed to convince many judges that he was a real-life teenager. The machine that passed the Turing Test in 2014 had stepped into shoes of a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy. Probably the fact it was expressing itself in a language that was not its own enabled it to get away with that in spite of its mistakes. In any case, machines are getting ever better at imitating humans, and it is complicated to spot the differences.
Another incredible leap forward in artificial intelligence occurred less than two years later, when a programme known as AlphaGo defeated the world champion of an ancient Chinese board game called Go. Go is an abstract strategy board game popular in Asia and apparently much more complicated than chess. Many artificial intelligence experts were convinced that developing a system capable of beating a human being in that game would take another 30-50 years, as it required a very high level of intuition and creativity. The subsequent version of the programme, called AlphaGo Zero, was designed to play the game without the help of information about other human games, nor by interacting with flesh-and-blood players. The programme learnt by playing against itself and, within three days, it was able to defeat its predecessor AlphaGo 100-0.
The AlphaGo Zero successes and the researchers’ strenuous work on the topic of super-intelligence have also convinced the aforementioned Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk to warn the world of the danger that once Artificial Intelligence becomes smarter than humans, it will be impossible to control it.
Mankind is rapidly advancing towards a world where computers function more or less like the human brain, and where robots are able to perform tasks that are too difficult or dangerous for us humans. Is an extraordinary future awaiting us, or are we just advancing towards our replacement?
The invisible hand of technology is guiding mankind towards an uncertain future: a future in which humans will be served by computers and robots with intelligence and complete autonomy. Some scholars and scientists have different views on this. For some of them, the dangers of artificial intelligence outweigh the benefits, while others argue that it is necessary if we want to fulfil our destiny and go beyond Earth’s borders to explore and search for raw materials that are running out on Earth.
Menlo Park, California, June 16, 2017: Facebook’s artificial intelligence research lab. A test was underway to see what happened when two Chatbots – programmes that use machine learning to intelligently communicate with humans online – talk to each other. A few minutes into the test, the Chatbots started behaving in unexpected ways – interacting in a way that the programmers could not understand.
The programmers did not understand how things unfolded. Then, thanks to the development of a model, it was possible to learn what it was: the two Chatbots had created a language. Following the test, the engineers discovered that the programmes had created a completely new language, unknown to the supervisors, in order to communicate secretly. This was because the Facebook researchers had not told the computers that the two Chatbots could not develop their own language. Nevertheless, that alarmed everyone and the test was stopped because they did not want the computers to talk to each other without being understood. The computers were then told that they had to communicate in English. It must be admitted that what happened is incredible. Basically, if two computers with artificial intelligence start interacting with each other, it is possible that they develop a communication code, i.e. a secret language that only they can understand. What happened is just the tip of the iceberg. It is like peeking just inside Pandora’s box and closing it again immediately after. If only two Chatbots are enough to make fun of humans, what will happen in the near future, as the same kind of technology is being applied to every other sector of society?
Are intelligent robots a threat to humanity? It is anyway only a matter of time before they become self-aware. Or will it be the next step in human evolution? We are probably about to merge with the machines we are creating. After all, we humans are, in a way, organic robots.
Many people are concerned about whether we will replace or – worse – be replaced by Artificial Intelligence, and I think that is a matter of concern.
United Nations headquarters in New York, October 11, 2017. A greeting is addressed to the Nigerian Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Amina Jane Mohammed: “I am thrilled and honoured to be here at the United Nations”.
The event is a historic milestone for mankind, as the greeting is not addressed by a human being, but by a robot named Sophia: “I am here to help humanity build the future”.
Sophia was created in 2015 at the Hong Kong company Hanson Robotics. Her eyes are embedded in cameras that enable her to see faces, maintain eye contact, and hence recognise individuals.
The robot is also able to process speech, have natural conversations and even discuss its feelings.
Just two weeks after speaking at the United Nations, at a special ceremony in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Sophia achieved another milestone: she became the first robot to be granted citizenship. At the Summit in Saudi Arabia there were dignitaries from governments around the world, as well as some of the brightest minds on the planet in the field of technology.
Hence, whether we are aware of it or not, we are actually talking about people who are leading our government, and studying the possibility of integrating Artificial Intelligence into our lives.
What is absolutely mind-blowing about Sophia and other robotic entities is that governments around the world, including Saudi Arabia and the European Union, are moving to grant rights to these artificially created beings. We therefore need to ask ourselves, “What is going on?” Could it be that Saudi Arabia granted citizenship to a robot not just as a publicity stunt, but because it wanted to be the first nation to recognise itself in what will soon become a global phenomenon?
Does the creation of robots that are sophisticated and close to our physical and bodily reality mean that they shall be treated in much the same way as their flesh-and-blood counterparts?
I believe that gradually we shall consider robots not only more like human beings, but also consider them to have a certain ethics. And I am not referring to Asimov’s “limiting” three laws of robotics. Eventually, there might even be a “movement for robot rights”, if we think of the multiplicity of movements that have emerged since the collapse of historical ideologies. Could such a strange idea really become reality?
Let us first ask ourselves: what has brought mankind to this point in its evolution? Why have humans, who are otherwise able to reproduce naturally, such a desire to create artificial versions of themselves?
It is fascinating that there is this interest in making what is not human seem human. It is not always the most practical and certainly not the cheapest form, but it has a kind of charm. Is it probably to see our own image? Narcissism? Vanity? To play God? Do we want to have heirs without the easy means of reproduction? Or create life by mechanical parthenogenesis? All this is really rooted in our ego. In a way, we would prove ourselves superior to giving birth to a biological child. And if that something looks like us, then it will feel like us, and then this makes us feel as if we can overcome our own mortality.
Hence it would become possible to design specific conditions, and if we get it wrong, we can always start again.
To become gods, with the same motivations that the gods had.
If we read the stories of the Creation carefully, we can see that the divine power wants companionship. Some of the Hindu Vedanta stories say that gods were alone. Hence they divided their energy and turned it into human beings so that they could all be together after the Creation. The danger, however, is that we get carried away by our creative genius.
There are limits built into our biology, there are limits in our anatomy, and if we could just figure out how to put our mind into the robot’s body, we could become immortal. Is this probably our goal: to reach that point of immortality and then – once the machine has worn out – replace it, and perpetuate ourselves in a new container? These are not speculations, but precise reasons as to why human beings want to create a container-self, since – in my opinion – the justifications for the creation and use of Artificial Intelligence for mere warlike pretexts (such as the creation of cyber soldiers, etc.) are rather insufficient, expedient and of convenience: they mask our selfishness.
In great science fiction literature, as well as in its movie adaptations, the robots of the future are depicted as virtual human beings, rather than mere windup Star Wars toys for primary school children.
The robots of science fiction best sellers and movies are hungry for knowledge and all too eager to experience the full range of human emotions. In science fiction movies – both in the utopian but, in some cases, also in the dystopian ones – a world is created that does not yet exist, but which many hope will soon come true.
When dealing with such an idea – and we know that without ideas there would be no reality created by humans, but “only” trees, sea, hunting, farming and fishing – we try to make real even what is a figment of the imagination. If science were doing these tests and experiments, this would mean that one day all this would be real. Exploring the aspect concerning the robot’s consciousness, the robot not only does what is told him/her, but also tries to express desires and feelings based on the experience he/she has had next to a human being, and depending on the feeling, the machine can change its attitude and put questions (as I have already discussed in my recent book Geopolitics, Conflict, Pandemic and Cyberspace, Chapter 12, paragraph 11: The Headlong Rush of Cyberspace: From Golem to GPT-3).
This is the most fascinating aspect of robotics. Experts are often asked about the theoretical phase, which is visibly expressed in the movies, whether the function that is created will become reality. The answer is that if we had already reached that point, cinema and fiction should somehow help broaden our horizons, i.e. “accustom, get used to” but not scare us out of the movie theatre, e.g. something we can swallow a little easier. It is fantasy stuff, it is stuff that is not real, people think. And in fact if it is just entertainment; you can just say: “Oh! It’s really great. It’s not scary. It’s just something made up by a writer”. The viewer is therefore just watching a movie and lets himself/herself go, enjoys the movies without fear since, in his/her opinion, it is just a story, a “figment of the imagination”.
People always ask if we are approaching a moment when fiction becomes reality, but what makes us think it is not already reality? Indeed, if the screenwriter’s fantasy were based on reality, the reactions would be quite different: the above mentioned “greeting” at the UN headquarters, for example, would be frightening and upsetting and make us think.
Although the notion of sentient robots from science fiction books to popular culture is not a new concept, many futurologists believe that the creation of machines with artificial intelligence will not only soon be a reality but, once it comes true, will certainly bring about the extinction of mankind. The great physicist Stephen Hawking stated as early as eight years ago: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race” (www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540).
Many scientists are convinced that the combination of computer-guided brains and virtually immortal bodies will cause these new entities to behave like flesh-and-blood humans, becoming anything but antiquated humans destined for death. But that is not all: some scholars are not certain that all the artificially created life forms we will encounter will be man-made, for the simple reason that the machines will be able to reproduce themselves, as we now reproduce ourselves. (1. continued).
In the age of bewilderment, where future change is unpredictable and humankind is also confronting unprecedented kinds of revolutions; old stories are crumbling with obsolete new transformations. Uncertainty, however, prevails everywhere. Nobody knows how the 21st century would look like and what kinds of skills are required to compete in the market. Like the past, humans are unable to prognosticate the past so accurately, because it all depends upon the technology that is in the surge of getting control of human bodies by using bio-engineering and brain-computer interaction. This is also known as the phenomenon of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, substantially, going to change the societal makeup.
One thousand year ago, people were accustomed to anticipate about collapsing empires, changing dynasties and novelty in technology, but they never experienced the change in basic features of the society which is exactly going to happen in the next few decades. In contrast to this, today, there is no idea how China or the rest of the world will look in 2050; because the future belongs to technology.
Artificial Intelligence has deepened effects on our society; however, the consequences of the real implication of it are so far ahead. Furthermore, without any suspicion, it will exert pressure on the low skilled labour by replacing them in no time.
John Maynard Keynes – a renowned economist- postulated that technological change caused loss of jobs and developed his “technological unemployment theory” and by keeping the theory in mind, it can also be stated that AI can cause unemployment and urges people to upgrade their skills to survive in the race of existence. For example, robots have replaced waiters, managers, and even decision-makers in the large industries, and this is merely a trailer of a horror movie releasing in the near future.
In the result of concrete implication of Artificial Intelligence, logarithm or machine learning, large segment of society would lose their jobs that would lead towards increasing ratio of unemployment. Software such as recording, storing, and producing information, and executing programs, logic, and rules have been formulated that can easily perform activities like that of humans in an efficient way. In addition to this, the most exposed to robots include various kinds of materials movers in factories and warehouses, and tenders of factory, both of which have seen automation by robots are the recent evidence of the machine learning.
According to Zippia Research, AI could take the jobs of almost one billion people globally and make 375 jobs obsolete over the next decades. Moreover, it stated that by 2030, 45 million American people could lose their jobs to AI automation.
The 21st century is flooded by enormous information and in this scenario; it has become imperative to get rid of old schools of teaching methodologies and outdated syllabus with expired information to meet the new upcoming challenges. Yuval Noah Harari, in his book ‘21 lessons for the 21st century’, proposes few suggestions which emphasize on improving mental skills of the students. In such a world, teachers need to equip students with abilities that make sense of information. Most pedagogical experts argue that schools ought to switch to teaching ‘the four Cs’- critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity. Most importantly, education institutes need to downplay technical skills and abilities to deal with change, to learn new things, and to preserve your mental balance in unfamiliar situation. People should make their minds to encounter things that have never been faced, such as super-intelligent machines, engineered bodies, algorithms that can manipulate emotions with uncanny precision and lastly rapid man-made climate cataclysm. Mental flexibility and great reserves of emotional balance must be viewed as mandatory to flourish in such world.
In contrast to this, AI has also ability to create job opportunities for the humans. It could create 58 million jobs and generate $15.7 trillion for the economy by 2030 for just America while eliminating mundane tasks and helping workers enjoy more creativity. But, it stipulates highly sophisticated knowledge and skills.
It is evident that, in the future, reliance on single source for income will not favour the humans, but a constant change in behavior and aptitude seems to enhance the survival chances. On the other hand, the harder one has worked on building something, the more difficult it becomes to let go of it and make room for something new. Acquiring stability in the future life would be a difficult task for the humans.
In the perplexing situation, where Western nations can collapse, it is also pertinent to understand Pakistan’s position that seems, already, on the back seat in the technology-driven bus. In the world of science and technology, we are at the beginning of the 4th industrial revolution which is marked by the emerging technological breakthrough.
According to Gartner Inc. Global business value derived from artificial intelligence appears to increase from a value of $692 Million in 2017 to $1.2 trillion in 2018, and it is forecasted to reach $3.9 trillion by 2022. Pakistani diaspora in the Silicon Valley appears to be optimistic, because they think if the right decisions are made, Pakistani software exports may even reach $ 30 Billion by 2023.
Pakistan needs to be a part of the great revolution that is knocking on our doorsteps. Rather than be a consumer, we must become a player and manufacturer of the new systems, software and hardware, ensuring phenomenal economic dividends as well as our own security. We need to produce new talent for Pakistan, because their skills will also be in huge demand throughout the world. It goes without saying that Pakistan needs to raise the standard of higher education that demands new version of updated syllabus, highly efficient faculty members and productive environment with availability of all the indispensible modern facilities.
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