The first Israeli mission on the moon is scheduled for Thursday in Florida

CAP CAN CANVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – The first Israeli satellite designed to land on the moon is expected to take off from Florida on Thursday in the first privately funded lunar mission, as the Jewish state seeks to become the fourth country to reach the surface of the natural satellite of the Earth.

The unmanned robotic explorer named Beresheet – in Hebrew for the word "Genesis" – was to be taken off the Cape Canaveral Air Base at 8:45 pm. EAST (045 GMT Friday) at the top of a Falcon 9 rocket launched by California entrepreneur Elon Musk's SpaceX.

This dishwasher-sized LG was built by SpaceIL, a non-profit space company, and Israeli defense subcontractor Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), with $ 100 million provided almost entirely. by private donors.

If the launch is successful, Beresheet is expected to arrive on the moon's side in April after a two-month trip over 6.5 million kilometers.

SpaceIL said it hopes that Beresheet will inspire Israel's defense-based space program to pursue more scientific missions through an "Apollo effect," making reference to the manned lunar exploration program that has become the only one of its kind. NASA's main objective in the 1960s and early 1970s.

The United States, the former Soviet Union and China are the only three nations to date to have made "controlled" soft landings on the surface of the Moon.

The American Apollo program counted six inhabited missions on the moon – the only ones still carried out – between 1969 and 1972, with about a dozen unmanned landings combined by the United States and the Soviets. China made history in January with its Chang'e 4, the first to land on the dark side of the moon.

"This is the beginning of Israel's history in the far space … whether it succeeds or not," said SpaceIL's president and billionaire developer in the field of High-tech Morris Kahn, who invested $ 44 million in the Beresheet project, in an interview with Reuters. .

The Falcon 9 rocket will propel Beresheet into a "long and complex" Earth orbit, where it will spend about five weeks progressively expanding its orbit until it is close enough to enter the gravitational field of the moon. From there, the spacecraft will perform a series of maneuvers to reach its destination between the Apollo 15 and 17 landing sites by mid – April.

During a mission that should only last two or three days on the moon, Beresheet will use embedded instruments to photograph the landing site, measure the magnetic field of the moon and return all data to the Yehud ground station of SpaceIL based in Israel, via NASA. Deep Space Network, told Reuters the vice president of SpaceIL, Yigal Harel.

If successful, Beresheet will become the prototype of a series of future moon landing missions planned jointly by IAI and the German OHB system on behalf of the European Space Agency.

SpaceIL has no plans for future exploration beyond Beresheet and "will not continue after this mission," Harel said.