The State of Israel, a country that has never successfully landed any spacecraft on the Moon, is slated to launch an unmanned spacecraft into space with the intention of landing it on the surface of the Moon before the end of the week.
Named after the Hebrew term for “beginning,” the Beresheet unmanned lunar spacecraft will be launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida via a SpaceX Falcon 9 partially reusable rocket.
SpaceX’s Launch Complex 40, also known as SLC-40, is the formal name of the planned launch site of the Israeli spacecraft.
Beresheet is a direct descendant of last year’s Lunar XPRIZE competition that was held by Google. If you don’t remember, Google officials stated that zero of the contest’s five final competitors would be able to successfully launch itself to the Moon by March 31, 2018, the deadline for competitors to launch their unmanned spacecraft to the lunar body. The winner of the contest would have received a whopping $30 million in prize money.
Even though the developers of Beresheet wouldn’t be able to recoup its costs of development and launch, they decided to march onward. In hindsight, the Israeli craft’s developers might have been over 10 months late, though their efforts were undeniably a good idea.
If successful, Beresheet will be the first manmade object funded by private parties to reach the surface of the Moon.
Developers for the Beresheet spacecraft have made clear that it will revolve around the Moon for roughly two months. After the two months are up, Beresheet is slated to land in the Sea of Serenity, formally known as Mare Serenitatis, which is a massive recessed area that was formed by archaic volcanic explosions.
Beresheet is equipped with a magnetometer, a tool used to measure magnetic currents and fields. The lunar probe is designed to transmit its magnetometer’s findings back to Earth to be used as data for scientific research. The customized magnetometer was created with close assistance from the Weizmann Institute of Science’s faculty, a research university in Israel. The data is said to be shared with the United States’ NASA, the world’s supreme government-ran space agency.
The probe will bring along a time capsule that contains information about Israel and Hebrew.
SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace, a nonprofit organization and government agency, are jointly responsible for Beresheet. The project has been funded fully by private parties.
