Israel's First Space Probe to be Launched to the Moon

With the launch of its first spacecraft to the Moon, Israel will become the fourth country in the world capable of leaving Earth's atmosphere and reaching another celestial body. According to Reuters, the Israeli spacecraft will be launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Friday, March 3, at Israeli time, which corresponds to the evening of Thursday, March 2, in Eastern Time. The Israeli aerospace team has recently been waiting at this launch site for the spacecraft's launch. Before Israel, only the United States, the Soviet Union, and China had this capability. The unmanned Israeli spacecraft, named Beresheet, was built by a private Israeli space company called SpaceIL. Several scientists in relevant fields at this company, along with other Israeli entrepreneurs and innovators, are confident in the success of their created probe. SpaceIL has won multiple awards globally in the past decade for its innovations, including some projects executed with the help of Google’s research and robots. Dr. Jonathan Weintraub, a 32-year-old Israeli aerospace engineer, described himself as a madman who has managed to find other crazies for innovative projects and encourage them to work together. Weintraub's creativity and passion encouraged the Israeli Space Agency to support their designs so that the inventions and successes of SpaceIL would also be registered under Israel's name. Shimon Peres, the former President of Israel and the founder of the country's nuclear reactor, was a significant supporter of the country's space projects. However, much of the funding for the Beresheet probe, which amounts to $100 million, has been provided by Morris Kahn, a South African-born Israeli billionaire. The couple Sheldon and Dr. Miriam Adelson, owners of a chain of casinos in the U.S. and major supporters of Israel in various projects, have also supported this project through one of their technology-backed companies. Scientists from the Israeli Space Agency, alongside SpaceIL personnel, have recently been at the Florida launch site and delayed the probe's launch for a short period two months ago to ensure its success. The Israeli robotic probe will be launched into space by a Falcon 9 rocket owned by Elon Musk's SpaceX in California, while Israel itself has ballistic missile capabilities, which it has only used for military projects until now. A successful launch of Beresheet will allow it to reach the Moon's surface in about two months after traveling six million and five hundred thousand kilometers in space. Eido Antabe, one of the innovators at SpaceIL, stated last year that the 585-kilogram Beresheet is the smallest of its kind to land on the Moon. The launch of the Israeli probe comes at a time when the United States and the Soviet Union (or Russia) have not sent any spacecraft to the Moon in nearly half a century; NASA in the U.S. has focused its space research on other celestial bodies and much farther distances. Beresheet, which in the five books of the Torah refers to the book of Genesis, is also set to automatically raise an Israeli flag on the Moon. This is not the first time that Israeli aerospace scientists have used biblical names for their scientific efforts. Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, although not religious, took a Torah and Hebrew symbols with him during his trip to the Moon in 2003. Ilan Ramon was one of the seven astronauts on the Columbia spacecraft, all of whom were killed while returning to Earth.