SpaceIL, an Israeli nonprofit, said its lander Beresheet, named for the Hebrew title for the Old Testament book of Genesis, spent the past two months traveling through space. Remarkably, the SpaceIL team built their lander with less than 50 engineers/entrepreneurs. In September 2007, I was joined on stage by Larry Page, Buzz Aldrin, and the deputy administrator of NASA to announce a $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE. Despite the crash, the mission is still significant.

SpaceIL’s Beresheet lunar lander, which was part of a privately-funded mission that would have made Israel the fourth country to successfully land on the Moon, faltered at the very last second. SpaceIL's Beresheet lunar lander took a selfie with Earth in the background from a distance of more than 23,000 miles away during a slow spin of the spacecraft. It’s been a very interesting month thus far for SpaceIL, the Israeli organization which sent the Beresheet lunar lander into space and subsequently crashed it into the Moon. Photo Credit: SpaceIL The spacecraft launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket on Feb. 22 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The quick-thinking SpaceIL engineers issued a command to the spacecraft to restart the engine and it successfully fired them back up, but the lander was already plummeting to the lunar … Needless to say, things didn’t go exactly as planned, and while the mission was a huge success in a number of ways the company would love another crack at landing a spacecraft on the Moon in a much more gentle fashion. The mission has its roots in the $30MM Google Lunar XPRIZE which was announced in September 2007, attracting 26 … They are backed privately (principally) by Morris Kahn. Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) today (Feb. 18) announced that Israel's inaugural voyage to the moon – the world's first privately funded lunar mission – will begin on Feb. 21 at approximately 8:45 p.m. EST, when the lunar lander "Beresheet" ("In the Beginning") blasts off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The challenge we set was for a private team to build … Engineers cheer as SpaceIL’s lunar lander successfully entered into a lunar orbit. First privately funded moon lander crash-lands A successful touchdown would have made Israel the fourth country to pull off a lunar landing.

Private Lunar Lander – Reflections on SpaceIL Mission.