Posted on 02/03/2019 1:23:47 PM PST by BenLurkin
SpaceIL's Beresheet — Hebrew for "In the Beginning" — will become the first privately funded mission to launch from Earth and land on the moon, and the first spacecraft to propel itself over the lunar surface after landing by "hopping" on its rocket engine to a second landing spot. The mission marks yet another milestone, not only in the history and technical arc of space exploration, but also in how humankind goes about space exploration.
SpaceIL was founded in 2011 to compete in the Google Lunar XPrize, a program that planned to award US$30 million to the first privately funded team who could build a spacecraft and land it successfully on the moon. Beyond landing, the spacecraft, or a rover, had to travel a distance of 500 meters or more and beam high-definition imagery of the landing environment to Earth. The Google Lunar XPrize contest deadline ended in 2018 without a winner. Undaunted, SpaceIL forged ahead with the development and construction of the spacecraft, and is now ready to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The Beresheet lander is about the size and shape of a family dinner table, roughly 6 feet in diameter and 4 feet high, weighing (on Earth) about 350 pounds. This doesn't include the nearly 1,000 pounds of fuel needed to land the spacecraft on the moon. Carrying instrumentation to measure the magnetic field of the moon, a laser-reflector provided by NASA and a time-capsule of cultural and historical Israeli artifacts, the mission will ride into space as a secondary payload — like a rideshare passenger — aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Hebrews proving again they are “First Peoples”
Kewel idea and love to see what it reveals...
Obviously they received help from the prestigious Palestinian Institute of technology.
Beresheet — Hebrew for “In the Beginning”
Pedantically speaking, it’s Hebrew for “In the Beginning (of)”.
They can go to the moon, salvage all the junk that’s up there, bring it back and sell it.
Hope they tool enough diamonds to show up in the pics!
(Heinlein: Man who sold the Moon)
What was the song Caption John?.
“Hebrews proving again they are “First Peoples””
In what way?
*ping*
They could pay for the whole trip by simply planting the Golden Arches on the moon.
“Obviously they received help from the prestigious Palestinian Institute of technology.” You got the organizations mixed up, it was the Palestinian Organization of Science, or POS as it’s known throughout the scientific community.
I think that’s in outer Mongolia
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