UK-propelled Israeli probe aims to be the first privately-funded lunar lander

Beresheet, the Hebrew name for the book of Genesis meaning “In the beginning”, was launched on 21 February  atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 8-45pm local time.

The project was organised by SpaceIL, a non-profit founded to enter the Google Lunar X-Prize. The spacecraftwas funded by philanthropists including the American Sheldon Adelson and the Israeli telecommunications entrepreneur Morris Khan, as well as the Israeli Space Agency, but did not eventually enter the competition.

The lander has cost around $100m, and its mission includes landing on a lava plain called Mare Serenitatis in the Moon’s northern hemisphere, taking photographs and investigating magnetic anomalies known to exist in this region. As part of the X-prize stipulations, the lander has to be able to travel 500m, and it will do this by taking off some hours after its first landing and hopping to a new location. The magnetic artefacts of Mare Serenitatis are intriguing because the moon does not have a magnetic field, but some rocks and regions on its surface are known to have different levels of magnetism.