SpaceIL, a privately funded non-profit organization from Israel and the government-owned corporation Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) will soon launch for the lunar surface with a digital time capsule on board. If successful, it will mark not only the first Israeli craft to land on the moon, but the first-ever private moon lander, as well.
The non-profit organization announced in a statement in December of 2018that their spacecraft, manufactured by IAI and named Beresheet (the Hebrew word for Genesis), will launch to the moon in February. It will launch along with a host of satellites as a secondary payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
SpaceIL began their journey to the moon as the only Israeli team participating in the Google Lunar X Prize competition. The competition originally offered a prize of $30 million to the first non-government team to land on the lunar surface and complete a specific set of ...
