Is Israel about to become the fourth nation to land on the moon?

The Man on the Moon is about to have one in the eyes. Tonight we are witnessing the take-off in the space of the first privately funded Moon mission.

Due to its launch on a SpaceX rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida, SpaceIL, based in Israel, will send a spacecraft into orbit around the moon and, in April, will attempt to place a lander called Beresheet (in Hebrew for "Genesis" ) on a section of the Moon surface often visualized as the right eye of the man on the moon.

Can I watch the live launch?

Yes. Its launch is scheduled for Thursday, February 21 at 20:45 EST, at 17:45 PST, early Friday morning at 1:45 GMT. Visit the SpaceIL website or Twitter for a link or go directly to the SpaceX webcast page or live feed to YouTube.

Beresheet will be a secondary payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to be launched later today from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

(Image: © NASA)

What makes the mission so special?

This will be not only the first privately funded moon mission, but also the first Israeli lunar spacecraft. If it succeeds, Israel will become the fourth nation to land on the moon after the United States, Russia and China.

Beresheet will also be the smallest lunar lander to date, is no bigger than a binder and weighs only 600 kg. It cost $ 90 million (about £ 69 million, $ 127 million), part of which comes from the Israeli government, but the vast majority comes from private investors.

(Image: © Jamie Carter)

How will Beresheet arrive on the moon?

It's a pretty complicated and slow but fascinating process. After entering a large elliptical orbit, Beresheet will rotate three times around the Earth, each taking 19 hours, before firing a rocket to raise the top of the orbit. Eventually, its elliptical orbit will take it to the distance of the Moon, and when it intercepts the orbit of the Moon, Beresheet will slow down and enter an elliptical orbit around our satellite on April 4th.

When and where will Beresheet land on the moon?

After passing through a close orbit, April 11 is the scheduled date for an attempt to land on the lunar surface. Space IL targets the Sea of ​​Serenity, an ancient lava plain located in the northern hemisphere of the Moon. On April 11, the Moon will be in the first quarter, which is crucial because the sea of ​​serenity will be on. This area of ​​the moon has already been visited, notably by NASA's Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Space IL will communicate with Beresheet via ground stations in Chile, Sweden, Hawaii, Germany and Australia.

(Image: © Eliran Avital)

What will Beresheet do on the moon?

He will take photographs and measure the magnetic field of the moon above the landing site using a built-in magnetometer. In collaboration with the Weizmann and UCLA Scientific Institute, Beresheet will attempt to solve the mystery of why the magnetic field strength of the Moon seems to vary in the sea of ​​serenity. This is thought to be due to the presence of potassium, uranium and thorium.

A reflex reflector from NASA has also been installed. It reflects the laser beams that NASA will use to precisely locate Beresheet and thus check the landing.

However, Beresheet has a very short shelf life and should not last more than two days. It is actually a proven concept vehicle, originally created to compete with the Google Lunar XPRIZE. A $ 20 million prize was created to encourage the construction, launch and landing of an unmanned spacecraft on the moon by a private company. SpaceIL was a finalist, but the competition ended without a winner on March 31, 2018, when Google stopped sponsorship.

(Image: © SpaceX)

What's inside Beresheet?

A time capsule. Three disks inside Beresheet each contain hundreds of digital files detailing the spacecraft and crew that built it, as well as many Israeli national symbols, including the Declaration of Independence of Israel, the Bible , the Israeli national anthem "Hatikvah", the Israeli flag and Israeli literature and songs. It also contains paintings, dictionaries in 27 languages ​​and a copy of Wikipedia.

"We do not know how long the spacecraft and time capsule will stay on the moon," said Yonatan Winetraub, one of SpaceIL's founders. "It is very possible that future generations will find this information and want to know more about this historic moment."

(Image: © SpaceIL)

What will SpaceIL do next?

The technical knowledge accumulated during the development of the mission will not be lost. In fact, Israeli builders Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) have already teamed up with the German company OHB System to develop a Commercial Lunar Surfing Access Service (LSAS) that can be sold to the European Space Agency ( ESA) for payloads up to 150 kg. Everything will depend on the success or otherwise of Beresheet, but having a commercially available lunar lander will help ESA to more easily and cheaply test technologies for producing oxygen, water and other raw materials from lunar soils.

As always, the final phase is the long-term human colonization of space away from the Earth-Moon system. It remains to be seen whether Beresheet can help achieve this goal, but this seemingly small and affordable mission could still have far-reaching consequences.