Israel flying to moon after SpaceX launch

An Israeli spacecraft blasted off to the moon in an attempt to make the country’s first lunar landing, following a launch yesterday by SpaceX.

A communications satellite for Indonesia was the main cargo aboard the Falcon 9 rocket, which illuminated the sky as it took flight. But Israel’s privately funded lunar lander – a first not just for Israel but commercial space – generated the buzz.

Israel seeks to become only the fourth country to successfully land on the moon, after Russia, the US and China. The spacecraft – called Beresheet, Hebrew for Genesis or ‘‘In The Beginning’’ – will take nearly two months to reach the moon.

‘‘We thought it’s about time for a change, and we want to get little Israel all the way to the moon,’’ said Yonatan Winetraub, co-founder of Israel’s SpaceIL, a non-profit organisation behind the effort.

The four-legged Beresheet, barely the size of a washing machine, will circle Earth in ever bigger loops until it’s captured by lunar gravity and goes into orbit around the moon. Touchdown would be April 11 at the Sea of Serenity.

Nasa’s Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s took about three days to get astronauts to the moon, but they used monstrous Saturn V rockets. The $100 million (NZ$147m) Beresheet mission couldn’t afford its own rocket – even a little one – so the organisers opted for a ride-share. That makes for a much longer trip; the moon right now is nearly 370,000 kilometres away. –