Israeli firm SpaceIL is to launch an unmanned lunar-lander probe in December, with touchdown scheduled for 13 February. If successful, the $$20 millionm project would be the first privately run mission to the moon. The 600-kg probe will be carried into an elliptical orbit as a secondary payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and, during its two-day mission, will take photos and carry out a Weizmann Institute of Science experiment on the lunar surface. SpaceIL was one of the competitors in Google's abandoned Lunar XPRIZE, which sought to encourage development of a system to send robots to the moon.
Israeli firm SpaceIL is to launch an unmanned lunar-lander probe in December, with touchdown scheduled for 13 February. If successful, the $95m project would be the first privately run mission to the moon. The 600-kg probe will be carried into an elliptical orbit as a secondary payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and, during its two-day mission, will take photos and carry out a Weizmann Institute of Science experiment on the lunar surface. SpaceIL was one of the competitors in Google's abandoned Lunar XPRIZE, which sought to encourage development of a system to send robots to the moon.