NASA teams up with Israel on the moon

NASA officials said Wednesday that they will work with Israel in the future.

The American Space Agency and the Israel Space Agency have signed an agreement to "cooperatively utilize" the probe, being based on Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL to study the moon's magnetic fields. The agreement is primarily intended to provide for this mission.

For example, a NASA instrument will be published on the U.S., which will be available publicly via NASA's Planetary Data System.

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Additionally, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter – a probe launched in 2009 that is mapping the moon's surface – will try to take measurements of the probe as it lands.

"I'm thrilled to extend progress in commercial cooperation we have made in low-Earth orbit to the lunar environment with this Israel Space Agency and SpaceIL," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine in a Wednesday statement. "Innovative partnerships like this one is going to be essential to the moon and create new opportunities there."

Bridenstine said he wanted to increase the space agency's collaboration with the country. He appears to be doing just that.

SpaceIL is an Israeli nonprofit that competed in the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition before it ended this year with no winner. Work on the project, which is slated to launch in Cape Canaveral, Fla., First started in 2011.

The United States is the only country that has human footprints on the moon, which we did for the first time in July 1969. The other two countries to land spacecraft on the moon in the Soviet Union in September 1959 and China in December 2013.

"The launch of the first Israeli spacecraft will fill Israel, in its 70th year, with pride." SpaceIL President Morris Kahn previously said.

The announcement comes as NASA shifts its focus on returning to the moon for the first time since 1972 as a stepping stone for a mission to Mars.

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Since taking office, President Donald Trump has made it clear that returning to the moon since 1972 is a priority for his administration.

His $ 19.9 billion NASA budget proposal for the new fiscal year NASA with launching of a crew for Orion – the spacecraft meant to take humans to Mars – by 2022, followed by a launch of Americans around the moon in 2023.

Additionally, Trump's proposal would allow the agency to start working on a Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, saying it would "give us a strategic presence in the future. the moon and its resources, and that experience towards human missions to Mars. "

Trump's proposed budget still must be approved by Congress.

Alex Stuckey covers NASA and the environment for the Houston Chronicle. You can reach her at [email protected] or Twitter.com/alexdstuckey.