The video will auto-play soon 8 Cancel The Daily Star's FREE newsletter is spectacular! Sign up today for the best stories straight to your inbox Invalid Email Something went wrong, please try again later. Sign up today! Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Israel firm Space IL’s Beresheet is set to make the momentous landing at around 8.30pm. If it is a success, Space IL will make Israel the fourth country, after Russia, the US, and China, to land a spacecraft on the Moon. The bold mission — first dreamt-up by three young Israeli engineers in a bar — will be documented in National Geographic’s Budget Mission to the Moon. Co-founder Kfir Damari told Daily Star Online the mood on the ground was “exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time”. (Image: BERESHEET) (Image: BERESHEET) “Last week we made history by making Israel the seventh country to orbit the moon”, he added. The project was originally intended as a contended in the now defunct Google Lunar X Prize and is estimated to have cost, in space flight terms, a modest $95million. It part-funded by Israeli billionaire Morris Kahn and the Israel Space Agency. Damari noted that private companies are now leading some of the most daring endeavours in space. “We are part of an amazing change in the space industry,” he said. “We are launching with SpaceX which is amazing.” Of the 32 entrants in the Google Lunar X Prize, Space IL alone has successfully launched. (Image: BERESHEET) Beresheet is “the smallest craft ever”, Damari said, and its size has been compared to washing machine. The spaceship went through several re-designs before it was ready for launch on February 22. “The were a lot of challenges,” Damari said. “…So many people have worked to make our dream into a reality.” Recalling Space IL’s origins, in a Munich bar with co-founders Yariv Bash and Yonatan Winetraub, Damari said: “It was in the end of 2010 we saw the Lunar X challenge and I told them: ‘If you are serious I’m in.’ “We met — three engineers in the bar — and over a couple of beers we took out papers and we and started designing the space craft.” And now, nine years later, Beresheet is carrying a Laser Retroreflector Array for NASA to help guide future missions back to the moon. (Image: BERESHEET) During landing and whilst on the surface, the craft will also take magnetic readings of the lunar rocks to help unlock secrets of the moon’s origin. But one of the things the trio is proudest of is the inspiration they have been to their nation’s children. He added: “We also decided we wanted to be a non-profit; in the last eight years we have managed to get more than one million kids and show them that they can study science and they can dream big and follow their dreams.” Damari hopes to inspire Israel’s future astronauts — boys and girls — and said they will work on the International Space Station (ISS) or even the moon. Budget Mission to the Moon airs on National Geographic on April 23 at 9pm<doc-sep>Israeli spacecraft Beresheet is gearing up towards the end of its voyage. After traveling 6.5 million kilometers in space and orbiting both the earth and the moon, the vehicle is set to attempt its landing tonight at 22:05 Israel time. It is currently in elliptical orbit of the moon, only 15-17 kilometers above its surface at its lowest point. Beresheet was developed by Israeli nonprofit organization SpaceIL, in partnership with Israeli state-owned defense contractor Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. (IAI). If it sticks its landing, it will be the first private spacecraft to land on the moon, in the process making Israel the fourth country to achieve lunar landing. Once safe, sound, and stationary, Beresheet will commence its mission, measuring the moon’s magnetic fields for a few days before surrendering to the sun’s heat.<doc-sep>This mission was an entry to Google’s Lunar X Prize, held in 2007 and 2008. The mission, for a privately funded team to send a spacecraft to the Moon and send video back to Earth, had an initial deadline of 2014, but dates kept being pushed back. Although five teams were part of the competition by 2018, it was announced last year that nobody was able to meet the deadline they had put in place of March 2018. Nobody won the prize money. Although they did not win the $20 million prize, SpaceIL continued developing its lunar mission. The whole mission has cost $100m, which is low for a lunar landing mission. On Tuesday, April 9, Beresheet fired its engines for just over a minute, to bring it into a closer orbit of the Moon in preparation for the landing. Beresheet will use its engines to bring it to a stable position 5 metres above the surface of the Moon. The engines will then be turned off, and the spacecraft will fall to the surface with the Moon’s gravity – which is about one sixth of the gravity on Earth. The spacecraft has four landing legs, each of which is made up of three struts that turn it into a kind of tripod, with a pad at the end that will be in contact with the Moon’s surface. Built into the spacecraft are energy absorption mechanisms, to help the spacecraft have a soft landing. One piece of energy absorption technology has been used in previous spacecrafts – honeycomb structures made of aluminium that will be crushed upon landing. Another bit of technology is brand new, however, so will be tested for the first time – stainless steel elements that are expected to compress and absorb energy. The legs will be placed far enough apart so the lander does not topple over when it lands. Afterwards, the landing gear will be retracted into the spacecraft. The probe’s landing site, Mare Serenitatis, is in the northern hemisphere of the Moon, close to the landing sites of Apollo 15 and 17, and Lunar 2 and 21. If Beresheet takes photographs on its way down, there’s a chance it will get a glimpse of some of these sites, similar to Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which took photos of Apolli 12, 14 and 17 on its way down. The chosen landing site has few craters, which means the landing should go smoothly. The crust of Mare Serenitatis is magnetic, which makes it a perfect spot for studying the Moon’s iron core and its magnetism. Beresheet has cameras to capture photographs and a magnetometer to measure the magnetic field on the surface of the Moon, at that site. “Beresheet is going to land on Mare Serenitatis, a dark basaltic plain formed by ancient volcanic eruptions” says Hani Mohammadi, an aerospace expert. The first hint the Moon ever had a magnetic field was given when astronauts first brought back samples of rock from the Moon and found some were magnetic. Until then, we had no idea the Moon had ever had a magnetic field. On Earth, our magnetic field is caused by the motion of liquid iron in our outer core, created by the convection of heat. This motion creates a dynamo, which is responsible for the magnetic field. The Moon, however, is not big enough for convection to take place in its core, so how liquid iron could be moving around in its core was a mystery. Now, we expect the Moon’s middle layer, called the mantle, is responsible for stirring up its liquid iron core. The core and the mantle rotate around slightly different axes, and the friction at the boundary causes the movement of the iron. The Moon’s magnetic field is thought to have lasted for about a billion years, somewhere between around 2.7 billion and 4.2 billion years ago. “Lunar magnetism has been an enigma for decades,” said Oded Aharonson, researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and lead scientist on the mission. “It is a privilege to be part of this mission that’s taking one more step towards solving it.” “Beside scientific research, it is the first ever private lunar mission and it is exactly what we need in space exploration, privatisation” says Mohammandi. “The success of Beresheet is encouraging for private investors to invest in future space projects.” More great stories from WIRED – The Play Store is packed with nasty, violent games for kids – Why does the London Tube still not have Wi-Fi in tunnels? – Netflix's Love, Death & Robots is just tedious sexist sci-fi – The grim reality of life under London's Gangs Matrix – Care about online privacy? Then change your phone number<doc-sep>Read: The moon is open for business “Well, we didn’t make it, but we definitely tried,” says Morris Kahn, the billionaire entrepreneur who funded the effort. “And I think the achievement of getting to where we got is really tremendous. I think we can be proud.” Before anticipation morphed into mourning, Beresheet sent one final photograph back to Earth: a close-up of the surface of the moon, the jagged terrain illuminated in the sunlight, almost the color of sand, specked with craters filled with shadows. “I was shaken,” Yoav Landsman, the deputy mission director and an engineer at SpaceIL, told me after the crash. “It was very hard for me.” “Space is hard,” people will say, an axiom that brings little comfort, at least in the moment when a beloved spacecraft smashes down. There are enough triumphs these days that the failures seem especially jarring, almost hard to believe. Hours after Beresheet sent its final transmission, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, the most powerful rocket in the world, launched for the second time, hurling a commercial satellite into orbit and pirouetting a trio of boosters back to Earth. (SpaceX even launched Beresheet itself, in February, on its Falcon 9 rocket.) Only a few months ago, China successfully landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon, a feat no one had ever attempted. The Beresheet mission arose from a global Google-sponsored competition that challenged privately funded teams to develop, launch, and land a rover on the moon, with a $20 million prize if it worked. More than 30 teams entered the contest in 2007. A decade later, five remained, but everyone was behind schedule. Last year, when it became clear that no one would meet a 2018 deadline, the competition was canceled. As Beresheet wound its way to the moon, the foundation behind the effort announced that SpaceIL would get $1 million if the team could stick the landing. After the crash, the funders said that SpaceIL would still receive the prize. Space is hard, and more people than ever before have chosen to face down the challenge. For decades, only governments launched stuff into space, from spy satellites to Golden Records to blue-eyed men with buzz cuts. Now the work is done by private entities such as SpaceX, and they get to decide what goes up. Sometimes it’s a red Tesla convertible. Other times it’s a moon lander from a nonprofit. And other spacecraft—landers and rovers—are on their way; commercial companies around the world are working on missions to the moon at a pace not seen since the Apollo era. Read: NASA is rushing to the moon Few had imagined this future even a decade ago. Now commercial rockets and payloads seem rather ordinary, and governments are paying private companies to do the job they used to do. Still, achievements in space by private groups are celebrated as wins for the country that hosts them. That’s especially true in Israel, a country dubbed “start-up paradise” for its population’s entrepreneurialism. Tel Aviv, where SpaceIL is based, has the highest number of start-ups per capita in the world. Years after the space race, landings on other worlds, whether on the moon or on Mars, are still celebrated as national achievements at home and broadcast as displays of prowess to the rest of the world.<doc-sep>
Not only will Israel land the first privately funded spacecraft on our lunar satellite, but it will become just the fourth nation after the US, China and the then-Soviet Union to achieve the feat. Israel’s spacecraft is by far the smallest and is also the cheapest mission of those to have come before it, weighing in at just 1,300 pounds and costing $100m in private donations – just a shade of the billions of dollars it has cost to previously to get there. Israeli organisation SpaceIL is behind the lunar lander, known as Beresheet, and it has taken seven weeks to get from Earth to the moon. The Israeli Space Agency (ISA) has vowed to share all of its data with NASA, and will join China’s Chang’e-4 which landed on the moon on January 3. Yigal Harel, head of SpaceIL’s spacecraft program, told The Jerusalem Post: “The most significant thing is not just becoming the fourth country to land on the Moon, but our desire for young people in Israel to go and learn science. “We know that we’re a start-up nation, and there’s a lot of hi-tech here and that people are our main resource. We want enthusiastic young pupils to go and learn engineering, mathematics, physics and more.” Israel moon landing LIVE: Watch first privately funded craft land on the moon A statement from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) added: "This is the lowest-budget spacecraft to ever undertake such a mission. “The superpowers who managed to land a spacecraft on the moon have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding. "Beresheet is the first spacecraft to land on the moon as a result of a private initiative, rather than a government.” SpaceIL: Israel launching 'Falcon 9' to the moon