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Israeli engineers completed Monday the treatment of a spacecraft they seek to send to the moon in the first months of 2019 to a place near Apollo 15 and 17.
The digital capsule will be the first such mission since 2013 and, if successful, will make Israel the fourth country to reach the moon in an unmanned vehicle.
Since 1966, the United States and the Soviet Union have sent about 12 vehicles to the moon, and China was the last to do so in 2013.
"The construction of the vehicle is almost complete and it is being tested," said Eido Entebbe, general manager of the nonprofit company SpaceL Corporation, which runs the project. We will be ready to go to Cape Canaveral in a few weeks. "
Israel has already launched industrial satellites, but this time it will launch the first long-range vehicle of its kind.
The vehicle, called Berichit (Genesis Hebrew), takes the form of a round table with four feet of carbon fiber 1.5 meters long, weighing about two-thirds of that weight.
It is expected that the Space Shuttle will be launched from Florida on a rocket bound for SpaceX 9 Falcon 9 in the coming months, after postponing a tentative deadline in December.
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The only cylindrical time capsule is adaptable to almost as large space conditions as a hard drive and carries digital files with child drawings, images and information about Israeli culture and culture. History of humanity.
"The capsule will stay on the moon and stay in its environment, maybe in 20 years, someone will drive a spacecraft to make it," Entebbe said.
Berichit also carries a device to measure the magnetic field on the moon.
MySpace's funding comes primarily from individual donors, including American poker magnate Sheldon Adelson and billionaire Morris Khan, co-founder of Amdocs, one of Israel's largest technology companies.
SPACE IT was founded in 2011 by a group of engineers with a budget of about 95 million dollars.
At an altitude of 60,000 km above the surface of the Earth, the vehicle will be separated from the rocket. It will initially orbit the Earth, then the Moon, two months later. After that, the vehicle will slow down and perform a silent descent that will not cause any damage.
"Our landing site is somewhere between the landing sites of Apollo 15 and Apollo 17," said Entebbe. "It is a flat area but also a few small ones. holes and lots of rocks. "
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