Start United States USA — Science First private space probe on the moon to launch this week

First private space probe on the moon to launch this week

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Israel hopes to become the fourth country in the world to land a spacecraft on the moon, with the launch of the unmanned spacecraft Beresheet from Florida’s Cape Canaveral on Thursday.
Tel Aviv

Israel hopes to become the fourth country in the world to land a spacecraft on the moon, with the launch of the unmanned spacecraft Beresheet from Florida’s Cape Canaveral on Thursday.
Beresheet is the Hebrew name of the Book of Genesis, meaning “in the beginning.” And it is a totally appropriate name for Israel’s very first venture into space. Beresheet is set to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 3:45 a.m. IST on Friday (8:45 p.m. Thursday EST),
If the mission succeeds, it will be making history – As the first mission to the moon by a private company and it will be a first for Israel, making it the fourth country to land on the lunar surface, following the U. S. Russia and China.
John Horack, an aerospace engineer at Ohio State University and a spaceflight expert, is giddy at the possibilities. “Nothing like this has been tried before,” he says. “We’re looking at an entirely new model for space exploration beyond Earth orbit.”
A SpaceX Fakcon 9 will carry the Beresheet into orbit.
SpaceX
Beresheet goes against tradition
Everything about the Israeli probe – from its funding to its engineering to its modest size – goes against tradition. The mission is not an Israeli government program. It came about due to the Google Lunar XPrize – a $30 million competition that called upon teams to land a robot on the moon safely, send it on a trek of at least 500 meters (1.500 feet) over the lunar surface, and beam images and data back to Earth.
Beresheet was born in the imagination of Yonatan Winetraub in 2009. At the time the 22-year-old Israeli aerospace engineer was spending a year at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. He heard about the Google XPrize and wondered if he couldn’t come up with a lander.

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