Israel announces unmanned moon mission for later this year

SpaceIL, an Israeli non-profit organization, has announced its intention to send the world's first privately funded unmanned spacecraft to the moon.

Israel aims to become the fourth nation to land on the moon and the first to use a small spaceship. The plans were announced at a press conference in Yehud, Israel on July 10. The Israel Aerospace Industries and SpaceIL are planning to launch an unmanned lunar spacecraft on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in Cape Canaveral, Florida in December. The spacecraft is docked to land on the Moon's surface in 2019.

The Positive result of an abandoned Google Contest

The SpaceIL project started as part of the Lunar XPrize launched by Google from 2007 and endowed with $ 30 million galvanize people to create inexpensive methods of applying robotics to space exploration. Unfortunately, the competition itself expired in March of this year and the grand prize was not claimed.

Israel's lunar mission is ambitious

Much of the funding came from Israeli billionaire and SpaceIL chairman Morris Kahn, and $ 88.5 million in total was spent on project to date. Kahn said: "After eight difficult years, I am filled with pride that the first Israeli spacecraft, which is in its final phase of construction and testing, will soon be heading towards the moon."

The probe measures approximately 2m diameter and 1.5m high, weighing just under 600kg. More than two-thirds of the weight is fuel that will be used when it lands on the surface of the moon. When it succeeds, Israel will become the fourth country to "soft earth" on the moon, after the former Soviet Union, the United States and China.

Once on the Moon, SpaceIL plans to use the probe to study his magnetic field, transmitting the data back to Earth for an experiment on which he works with the Weizmann Institute.