Israel’s lunar lander – which Weizmann has been helping develop – is en route to the Moon. The XPRIZE Foundation, “inspired” by the effort, has announced creation of a new “Moonshot Award,” which the SpaceIL team will receive upon a successful landing.
March 28, 2019
A team of scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science and SpaceIL engineers have identified the site for Israel's Beresheet spacecraft's lunar landing. According to a release disseminated by the Weizmann Institute, the chosen site was selected by Prof. Oded Aharonson of the Weizmann Institute and Prof. Jim Head of Brown University. It is located in the northeastern part of Mare Serenitatis, a few hundreds of miles east of the Apollo 15 landing site and a similar distance northwest from the Apollo 17 site.
March 19, 2019
The main scientific instrument on board the Israeli Beresheet spacecraft, the SpaceIL Magnetometer (SILMAG), has now been successfully turned on in space and data returned to Earth. After its successful launch, Beresheet is circling Earth on its journey to the Moon. Prof. Oded Aharonson of the Weizmann Institute of Science is heading the team that is currently analyzing the SILMAG information to evaluate the health and accuracy of the instrument in space, as well as recording the magnetic signature of the spacecraft itself, which will then be subtracted from the measurements made on the Moon.
March 17, 2019
Antifreeze is life’s means of surviving in cold winters: natural antifreeze proteins help fish, insects, plants, and even bacteria live through low temperatures that should turn their liquid parts into deadly shards of ice. Strangely enough, in very cold conditions, the same proteins can also promote the growth of ice crystals. This was the finding of experiments carried out in Israel and Germany using proteins taken from fish and beetles. The results of this study, recently published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, could have implications for understanding the basic processes of ice formation.
March 14, 2019
After an enterprise lasting nearly a decade, the Israeli unmanned Moon mission “Beresheet” (“Genesis” in Hebrew) will soon take off from Earth, bound for the Moon’s rocky surface. Prof. Oded Aharonson of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences is head of the international science team, and will be watching closely as the craft approaches the Moon and initiates the scientific part of the mission, which will start well before touchdown.
February 11, 2019
The race to land humans on Mars is on again – and at an accelerated pace. Superpowers including China and the United States have declared their intentions to land astronauts on the Red Planet, as have private entrepreneurs who are taking the challenge seriously, among them Elon Musk.
January 29, 2019
Weizmann scientists analyzed data from Cassini’s last mission to find surprising information about Saturn and its rings, reports The Jerusalem Post.
January 22, 2019
Under general relativity, a black hole is inescapable. Once something travels beyond the event horizon into the heart of the black hole, there’s no return. So intense is the gravitational force of a black hole that not even light - the fastest thing in the Universe - can achieve escape velocity.
Under general relativity, therefore, a black hole emits no electromagnetic radiation. But, as a young Stephen Hawking theorised in 1974, it does emit something when you add quantum mechanics to the mix.
January 21, 2019
Grand Finale was the official name of Cassini’s last act: a risky orbit between Saturn’s rings and atmosphere in a daring attempt to view the planet up close, just before going down in flames. Prof. Yohai Kaspi and Dr. Eli Galanti of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences led one of the studies on Cassini’s final mission: revealing the depth of Saturn’s jet streams ‒ the strongest measured in the Solar System, with winds of up to 1,500 km (about 932 mi) per hour ‒ and found them to reach a depth of around 9,000 km (about 5,600 mi). Teaming up with research partners in Italy and the U.S., their study also helped reveal the age of the planet’s iconic rings. The findings of these studies were published in Science.
January 17, 2019
©2019 American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science
