(Yehud) A private Israeli attempt to land on the moon. Faield
this evening, when the Israeli SpaceIL's
control centre lost communications with the Beresheet spacecraft, when it was
about 489 feet (149 meters) above the moon's surface resulting in it crashing
into the moon. The mission which was built and launched on the cheap after the nonprofit
organization SpaceIL was formed to compete in the Google Lunar X Prize. The
GLXP offered $20 million to the first privately funded team to put a robot down
softly on the moon, move it at least 1,650 feet (500 meters) on the lunar
surface and have it send high-resolution imagery home to Earth. Whilst google
closed down the competition SpaceIL
continued and in February piggybacked a ride on a SpaceX mission in which to get
their spacecraft to the Moon. Unfortunately as mentioned above the mission
failed, but the company is already looking at trying again.
'We had a failure in the spacecraft — we unfortunately have not managed to land successfully — we are the 7th country to orbit the moon and the 4th to reach the moon's surface,' says Opher Doron of Israel Aerospace Industries: #IsraelToTheMoon #SpaceIL #Beresheet pic.twitter.com/7siuo5Yf6Q— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) April 11, 2019
