The lunar launcher of SpaceIL takes great pictures from the other side of the moon

Late in the night, the satellite's moon-catching maneuver captured these beautiful pictures of the hidden side of the moon. A photo is a close-up view of the surface, taken at an altitude of 470 km. The other photo shows a part of the hidden side of the moon with the Earth in the background.

The hidden face of the moon is rarely seen, because the moon is locked, but the "dark" face of the moon has already been captured. In 1959, the Luna 3 was the first spaceship to send images of the hidden side of the moon. More recently, in early February, a Chinese satellite also captured pictures of the hidden side of the moon and the earth together.

Taking the Israeli flag, the small spacecraft made Israel the seventh nation to orbit the moon. On 21 February, the team launched it into Earth orbit on a Falcon 9 rocket, and for weeks its orbit around the Earth widened to an elliptical lunar orbit. When he crossed the Earth for the last time, he also captured a rare photo of the Earth at about 16,000 km of swirling clouds over the Arabian Peninsula and South Africa. -Is.

Beresheet is now in a position to become the first Israeli spacecraft and the first privately funded mission to land on the moon. Their project of landing on the moon began with Lunar XPrize from Google. Although the contest ended in 2018 with no winners, Google still promises SpaceIL a Moonshot Award worth a million dollars if it manages to stand out.

"After six weeks in space, we managed to overcome another critical step by entering the gravity of the moon," said SpaceIL CEO Ido Anteby. declaration. "We still have a long way to go before the lunar landing, but I am confident that our team will complete the mission of landing on the first Israeli spacecraft on the moon, which makes us all proud."

Stay tuned for April 11, by which time the company will try to reach its ultimate goal of landing softly on the moon. Whether it succeeds or not, the view was well worth it.