I took my daughter to this launch (we happened to be vacationing in the area). It was an evening launch and we spent the day at KSC. On the bus tour around the launch pads we happened to sit right behind a couple members of the SpaceIL team (including the chief systems engineer). They were extremely friendly and happy to answer all sorts of questions.
It's semi-private; the funding is private, and the team is lead by volunteers, but much of this effort is supported by Israeli Aerospace Industries which is a government owned company. I'm not sure how much, but you have the IAI logo plastered all over the mission.
What's true is that it's not a government initiated program per se, but it's still not entirely private either.
"In October 2015, SpaceIL signed a contract for a launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida on a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster, via Spaceflight Industries.[15][40] It was launched on 22 February 2019 at 0145 UTC (20:45 local time on 21 February) as a secondary payload,[4][6][23] along with the telecom satellite PSN-6.[41] Beresheet is being controlled by a command center in Yehud, Israel.[42]
From 24 February to 19 March, the main engine was used four times for orbit raising, putting its apogee close to the Moon's orbital distance.[43] The spacecraft performed maneuvers so as to be successfully captured into an elliptical lunar orbit on 4 April 2019, and has adjusted its flight pattern in a circular orbit around the Moon. Once in the correct circular orbit, it will decelerate for a soft landing on the lunar surface, planned for 11 April 2019.[44] "
They crashed. Based on the occasional English commentary during the stream, they had an IMU failure, that recovered, but then a main engine failure right near the end of the descent. They got the engine online again, but just looking the speeds on the telemetry, it was too late.
> On the way down, the main engine cut out. The engine was successfully restarted, but then communications were cut off, and no more information was sent back.
I wonder why this news isn’t as widespread as SpaceX launches. I would have loved to follow this from the beginning! Whats the best place to stay updated about this specific mission? - what a time to be alive
SpaceX's goals of creating a Mars colony with millions of people moving there in 20-60 years andreducing most long-distance travel on Earth to ~40 minutes create much wider audiences with huge excitement attached to every move. Also, Elon Musk is a celebrity and drives a lot of SpaceX interest.
Israel's SpaceIL is much smaller, has much more constrained focus and draws a smaller crowd due to the less-epic plans and less-known personalities. Not to take away from their accomplishments - I love this news story - but are lots of reasons that this is less-publicized as compared to SpaceX launches.
We all know that each successful SpaceX activity gets us closer to a Mars colony and that is super duper exciting.
Mission budget is around $100 million (including launch costs).
Which is modest for moon landing attempts, but still well outside of a one-shot fully privately funded initiative.
Perhaps still a possibility of being crowdsourced.
Google Lunar X prize was $20 million, which is more realistic for a private program.
Still, this is a _great_ leap forward. Now, students routinely design and launch satellites (around $50k for a CubeSat launch); I hope that someday the same will go for lunar probes.
Yeah i was laughing my ass off when I saw the altitude above surface was 0.15 km and the descent rate was 134.3m/s. Still, an achievement was made and I wish them luck in the future. This stuff always has me in awe, no matter the result.
Probably not. The goal of the project was to demonstrate a private company landing safely on the moon. Their second goal is for it to travel a short distance on the surface.
I'm really excited about this! The more entities that can launch, and land vehicles the better! This will surely benefit everyone!
Random though, when private companies like SpaceX "replace" say NASA's service of launching rockets, would this free more resources for NASA to explore other things?
That's exactly the goal of NASA's commercial launch programs (ISS resupply, etc). NASA wants to (and should) focus on science, and pushing the limits further. Commercial companies like SpaceX are now taking on the role of operating (and refining) the proven technologies.
Unfortunately, it crashed. They said they were having problems with the main engine. They restarted it, but as it was restarting it seems as if it gained too much velocity. It seems like the engine started again, but only right before it impacted with the surface at 134 m/s.
If it's a private spacecraft, how do you make this work financially? How do you find $100m ? It's not like there are commercial opportunities possible on the moon. Or the technology would be re-used by Israel for rockets?
In April 2014, American philanthropist Sheldon Adelson donated US$16.4 million to the project,[13] and in June 2017, the Israeli Space Agency (ISA) announced a donation of additional 7.5 million ILS (US$2,083,333), after having donated 2 million ILS (US$555,556) in previous years.[14]
In November 2017, SpaceIL announced that they needed US$30 million to finish the project. Morris Kahn resigned from chairing the board, and promised $10M if the organization could raise the additional $20M.[20] The amount required was produced by a few major donors.[21]
Most of the money is from private donors, some of it is from the government, though that is pretty common -lots of governments give out grants and funding to private organizations for the purpose of cultivating ingenuity or developing certain industries.
As I understand it the major help, and where it had a major advantage on other similar attempts, was by access to advance research and testing facilities of avionics in the IAI (a quasi government company in charge of commercial and military development of avionics). Especially wind tunnels and similar simulators.
That being said, it is still a very much private orginazion
Looks mostly like their funding is from donors who want to promote Israel or STEM? They also received funding from the Israeli government, but I believe it was a small percentage (< 5%).
Science first, but the biggest economic driver will be tourism and sports. Moonball will be the biggest sporting event broadcast on Earth. Jumping 20 feet for the dunk? Yes please.
But before team sports, dirtbiking will be a special once-in-a-lifetime moon tourist experience.
Going forward, there will be special culinary options due to the excessively large moonfruits that can be grown in low gravity.
The trip will only take a day of travel. Plenty of living room in those enormous natural moon caves (lava tubes). Let's have some fun up there.
> Science first, but the biggest economic driver will be tourism and sports.
Tourism for a couple of ultra-rich, yeah, but sports? Need massive structures for that one.
I rather believe that Moon commercial usage will be dominated by resource gathering: mining for rare materials deposited by aeons of asteroid hits, helium-3 (assuming the Moon Nazis from Iron Sky left us anything), or anything that can be chemically converted to rocket fuels in order to provide efficient fueling options for Mars and beyond missions.
"Despite early speculation which consisted largely of unique and fantastical possibilities... by affording unprecedented visibility due to it's mamouth size, proximity to dense population centers and rotational properties of the celestial body, Lamar advertising was able to secure exclusive rights to the entire lunar surface by 2036."
Advertising. It has a bunch of logos for the people who financed it. In a way, the US space program is an ad for the US military, but this is more overt.
The Keck Telescope has a 10m mirror, so it can resolve roughly 1.2 * 400n / 10 radians (at 400nm wavelength)[1]. The distance to the Moon is about 384000km. If you plug things into Wolfram Alpha [2], you get about 18m for the smallest object on the Moon that can be resolved by the Keck Telescope. I suppose that there are more technical problems that further limit the resolution. It seems unlikely that you'll be able to see anything using a telescope.
Best of luck to the team on this exciting day!