Moon Lander

OVERVIEW

IAI expands its activities to include planetary missions, and within this area, IAI’s ILL (Israeli Lunar Lander) has evolved on the solid base of Beresheet. Beresheet, a co-development spacecraft of IAI and SpaceIL and the 1st commercial lunar mission, began in response to the Google-Xprize competition and became a national-like mission with a primary goal of promoting technology education and creating the Israeli Apollo effect – the Beresheet effect. Beresheet had many first’s in her mission: the first non-governmental mission to the moon, the first ride share to the moon and the smallest spacecraft to aim and reach the moon. Beresheet launched on Feb. 22, made several maneuvers around the Earth for approaching the moon, and on April 11 directed itself for soft-landing. Unfortunately, 15 km from the moon during the landing procedure, after sending a selfie picture with the moon surface, Beresheet has not landed successfully, thus situating Israel as the 4th country to attempt landing and the 7th country that managed to orbit the moon.