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 company has already signed a contract worth $1.5bn (£1.1bn) with Nasa, which will provide it with access to its robotic arm and other equipment on board the spacecraft. 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.