Thursday: Space X to power privately funded lander to the moon!

[SteveG]

Hey, Space X is available. Time to get that Kickstarter fund going to put OWC TECH on the Moon!



A nonprofit Israeli consortium said Monday that it hopes to make history this week by launching the first private aircraft to land on the moon.

SpaceIL and state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries told a news conference that the landing craft — dubbed “Beresheet,” or Genesis — will take off from Florida, propelled by a SpaceX Falcon rocket on its weekslong voyage to the moon.

The spacecraft was born out of the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition to land an unmanned probe on the moon. The $30 million competition was scrapped with no winner last year after the organizers said none of the five finalists would make the March 31, 2018 deadline for a Moon launch.

The SpaceIL project has ballooned in cost over the years to around $100 million, financed largely by South African-Israeli billionaire Morris Kahn and other donors from around the world.

[SteveG]

and it's not alone:

"The ship is carpooling into space aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. The SpaceIL ship will be riding along with various satellites and other research equipment, all of which will get dropped off first. The Beresheet will be the last passenger dropped off in the SpaceX carpool."

[Filliam H. Muffman]

Bang. Zoom. You're going to the moon!

[cbelt3]

Proposed landing on Mare Serenitas (Sea of Serenity). Don't take the sky from me ?

The only science is a magnetometer and a corner cube for laser rangefinding. Looking for that Tycho Magnetic Anomaly ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceIL

Still, on a cost basis it's a dirt cheap lunar probe landing. I hope the little lander works and has a nice touchdown. I "DO" wish that someone would try to land in an ice formation and do some science on it directly.

[Numo]

Who’s paying for the lander and what do they hope to gain? (non-snarky question)

[testcase]

To the moon, Alice; to the moon! ;-)

[cbelt3]

Ammo wrote:
Who’s paying for the lander and what do they hope to gain? (non-snarky question)

Israeli group.
Bragging rights, media exposure, blah blah blah.

Keep in mind that there has been a LOT of robotic activity around the moon in the last 20 years or so.

Robotic Lunar landings so far by:
USSR
US
China

Manned lunar landings by US only.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploratio...xploration

Also note that the various space programs create a HUGE amount of science and engineering which continue to benefit humanity.