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The first Israeli spacecraft scheduled to land on the Moon will be launched in December, the SpaceIL initiative behind the craft announced Tuesday. The plan is for the spacecraft to land on the moon on February 13, 2019, after a two-month trip.
The SpaceIL organization participates in the Google Lunar XC Prize contest to win the first privately funded unmanned spacecraft on the Moon. Even though the contest has officially ended without a winner at the end of March this year, after a number of extensions to the $ 30 million cash award deadline, the competition continues without any further consideration. # 39; money.
But SpaceIL continued to develop its spaceship, which it began to build in 2013 in cooperation with Israel Aeronautics Industries. The spacecraft will be launched on a Falcon 9 rocket built by SpaceX company Elon Musk. The spacecraft will separate from its two-stage launching rocket at an altitude of 60,000 kilometers above the ground, where it will enter an elliptical orbit around the earth, which will slowly expand to the ground that the machine is captured by lunar gravity.
Ido Anteby, the CEO of the non-profit organization SpaceIL, says it will be the smallest spacecraft ever to land on the moon. It is about two meters in diameter and one and a half meters high. It will weigh 585 kilograms at launch, but will land with a weight of only 180 kilograms after burning most of its fuel.
SpaceIL hopes to make Israel the fourth country in the world – after the United States, Russia and China, to land a spacecraft on the moon. Beyond technological achievements and public relations, the initiative aims to arouse Israelis' interest in space and science, especially the younger generation, and to encourage them to study the trades. of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
The non-profit association SpaceIL was founded in 2010 by three young engineers – Yariv Bash, Kfir Damari and Yonatan Winetraub – to participate in the Google sponsored contest, which originally included a prize $ 20 million for the first group. spaceship on the moon. SpaceIL has grown over the years and has 50 employees. Most of his employees are engineers, while 10 others are involved in education.
The SpaceIL spacecraft also has a scientific mission: to decipher the magnetic mysteries of lunar rocks. The research, conducted in cooperation with scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, will use a magnetometer on the spacecraft to try to understand how the rocks on the moon received their magnetism.
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