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An Israeli spacecraft returned images from the other side of the moon on Friday after the Jewish state became the seventh country to successfully send an object into lunar orbit.
The uninhabited Beresheet – which means "Genesis" in Hebrew – began to orbit the moon on Thursday after completing a key maneuver that led to less than 300 km from the surface.
If Israel manages to land the 1,290-pound boat as planned on April 11, it will also be the first time a privately-funded mission lands there, the Times of Israel reported.
The $ 100 million spacecraft is a joint venture between SpaceIL, an Israeli non-profit organization, and Israel Aerospace Industries, funded almost entirely by private donations from Jewish philanthropists.
In order for the landing gear to enter lunar orbit, he had to slow down by 5,280 miles per second, the orbital equivalent of slamming the brakes, turning around so that his engines would push him in the opposite direction.
Engineers have been running engines since last Thursday since launching Beresheet Feb. 22 in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on top of a used SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The craft will trace loops smaller and smaller around the moon before attempting a landing in the sea of serenity.
"There is a good chance we will have an emergency landing," said Opher Doron, general manager of the space division at Israel Aerospace Industries. "It's very dangerous and it's hard to predict if we will succeed."
If successful, the spacecraft should perform two or three days of experiments before stopping and collecting about 400,000 pounds (by weight of the Earth) of human-made debris scattered on the surface of the moon, including the remains of the Apollo missions.
The United States, Russia (as the USSR), Japan, China, the European Space Agency and India have all visited the Moon via probes, although only the United States United, Russia and China have landed successfully.
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