Israel must launch on Friday a spaceship financed by private funds

Israel hopes to become the fourth country in the world to land on the moon with the unmanned Beresheet spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida this Friday. If successful, the 160-kilogram (350-pound-free) four-foot spaceship will also be the smallest and cheapest spacecraft to land on the moon.

The $ 100 million satellite (NIS 370 million) is a joint venture between the private SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries, funded almost entirely by private donations from well-known Jewish philanthropists, including South African billionaire Morris Kahn. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, Lynn Schusterman and others.

Previously, Russia (as a Soviet Union) and the United States landed on the moon. China landed an unmanned spaceship on the other side of the moon in 2013.

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Beresheet will take off from Cape Canaveral at approximately 3:45 pm (Ocean Time) on Friday (8:45 pm EST) to attend one of the Elon Musk SpaceX commercial space launches.

Once in the air, the probe will detach from the Falcon 9 rocket after about half an hour and begin its seven-week journey to the moon. Beresheet will encircle the Earth six or seven times in a series of growing ellipses before jumping into the moon's orbit on April 4th.

Beresheet will land on the moon between the detritus left by the Apollo missions 12 and 15 in the sea of ​​tranquility, April 11 around 8 pm, at about an hour, according to Ido Anteby, CEO of SpaceIL.

"This is the first mission of a small country on the moon, but it is a non-governmental mission to the moon, which is financed by private funds, "said Monday Anteby during a press conference at Tel Aviv. "It will open new horizons on the moon for business opportunities."

"Usually, these kinds of projects come from government agencies of big superpowers," said Anteby.

SpaceIL was the only Israeli competitor in the Google LunarX PRIZE international contest, which offered participants a chance to win $ 20 million by landing an unmanned spaceship on the moon. Google officially ended the contest on March 31 without a winner. But the group behind SpaceIL decided to continue its mission by appealing to donors to help finance this operation.

The Beresheet probe will measure the magnetic fields on the moon, data that will be transmitted to the Weizmann Institute to help scientists understand how the moon formed there are millions of people. years. Beresheet will send information about two to three days before the sun's rays melt parts of the communication system, thus ending the mission.

Although scientists are interested in the reliable data that Beresheet should collect, Mr. Ofer Doron, general manager of the Space Division at Israel Aerospace Industries, said that education was the only way to go about it. one of the main objectives of the spacecraft.

The Beresheet team hopes that the enthusiasm generated by Israel's first lunar landing will have an "Apollo effect," while space travel in the 1960s prompted hundreds of thousands of American children to study science and aerospace engineering.

"The most exciting part is getting the Israeli kids excited about technology and getting them to do it all," Doron said. "It's a great technological success, but it's also a huge success in education."

The Beresheet team has launched a number of educational initiatives alongside the Ministry of Education to help students track space vehicle travel, including special kits for teachers and a free smartphone app.

President Reuven Rivlin will host a slumber party with students Thursday night, until 3:45 pm to watch the launch at the president's residence in Jerusalem. The project employs more educators than engineers to make sure that the satellite's journey and landing on the moon reaches as many students as possible, said Daniella Geron, ground segment engineer. , in charge of the coordination between the different teams and the spaceship.

The spaceship carries a Hebrew Bible carrying nanotechnology on a small metal circle the size of a 5 shekel coin, and a time capsule containing the Declaration of Independence and the National Anthem from Israel, memories of a Holocaust survivor, children's drawings of space and the moon. , the traveler's prayer and a note from former President Shimon Peres.

The Beresheet Command Center is located in Yehud, about 15 km southeast of Tel Aviv, where the spacecraft was built and tested. In particular, he spent periods of 10 days in a vast vacuum that blew the spacecraft alternately with extreme heat and cold in order to withstand large temperature fluctuations in space.

In order to reduce costs and weight, Beresheet does not have duplicate systems. Most spacecraft have solar panels, communication systems and other technologies duplicated so that the backup system can be set up in the event of a breakdown and the mission can continue. With Beresheet, in case of equipment failure, the entire project is lost.

Beresheet will move at a speed of 36,000 km / h. When it reaches its farthest point, about 400,000 kilometers from Earth, the team will only be able to communicate with the spacecraft if the location of Beresheet can be located within a few meters. A team of engineers is currently training with NASA satellites to prepare them for the lunar landing.

The team will only have one opportunity to land on the moon, though she might be able to try again if she misses the first window, Anteby said.

The project hardly took place, a near-victim of the prolonged closure of US President Donald Trump's government. The spacecraft was packed and ready to travel to Israel by the end of December, but it is still waiting for clearance, while clashes on the wall of the Trump border have blocked the US government for 35 days.

If Beresheet had not arrived in America in time to be assembled for the launch of SpaceX, the entire project would have fallen apart, said 89-year-old Morris Kahn, president of SpaceIL. Kahn worked with a number of contacts to obtain US Customs approval despite the government shutdown, and the spacecraft arrived in Florida in time to launch.

The landing on the moon has also opened new avenues for cooperation with Israelis and NASA, which is excited about the low cost of this project and hopes to make a prototype for future moon landings if the operation succeeds.

"How many hutzpah [arrogance] Is that to think that you can reach the moon with 100 million dollars? Doron asked. "Maybe we should have named him hutzpah instead of Beresheet. The public chose the name Beresheet, the Hebrew name for the Book of Genesis, in a survey conducted by SpaceIL in July 2018.

SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries have also signed agreements with the German space agency OHB in addition to NASA.

"Many space agencies now want to return to the moon, so there is a marketing opportunity here," Doron said. He stressed that the Israeli lunar landing would enhance national pride and create business opportunities.

Space travel is in line with Uber and the sharing economy, with international space agencies seeking to reduce costs by using "shared routes" to hitchhike space in existing commercial launches.

The launch of the Falcon 9 rocket, which will allow Beresheet to move in space, will also launch a large satellite geo-communication and other equipment for the US Air Force. While Musk has cornered the market during commercial rocket launches, SpaceIL and IAI are hoping to find a niche in inexpensive landings on the moon. For example, space agencies or, one day, individuals or organizations could send cameras and research material to the moon. purposes.

For now, however, the team of engineers and educators has their eyes fixed on April 11, which is convenient after the Israeli elections scheduled for April 9.

Doron said the Beresheet team had chosen this date before the election call by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

For now, the 25 engineers are in a difficult period, making last-minute adjustments before Friday's launch.

"We will have about half an hour of contact with the spacecraft every four hours," said Geron, the engineer in charge of coordination. Beresheet's team will use satellite dishes around the world in Hawaii, Chile, Sweden, South Africa, Germany, the mainland United States and Israel, to track the satellite using satellite dishes up to 74 meters), says Geron.

She said the project was not limited to the data they hoped to collect on the magnetic field of the moon. "It's about acquiring knowledge that will stay in Israel," she said. "Everything we've gone through, all the connections, all the late-night e-mails, we learned a lot and next time it will be faster and more efficient," she said. "We needed to find so many creative solutions and ways to make communication effective as the spacecraft moves and we move forward. We are accumulating all this knowledge and the branch of education will inspire as many children. "

Geron said that when the team of engineers would need a break from intensive work, they would go to the schools to give lectures on the project and come back inspired by everything. interest in the Beresheet project.

"As soon as we have connected the probe after landing, we will be able to breathe again," said Geron. "And all that will be worth it."