The SpaceIL non-profit organization, which has been developing an unmanned spacecraft for landing on the Moon, today announced at a press conference that it would conducting the launch in December 2018. The spaceship will be sent to the Cape Canaveral in the US for its launch a month before that and is scheduled to land on the Moon on February 13, 2019.

SpaceIL was founded in 2011 by three engineers: Yariv Bash, Kfir Damari, and Yonatan Winetraub. Construction of the spacecraft began two years later in facilities provided by Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. (IAI) (TASE: ARSP.B1). SpaceIL originally hoped to win Google's Lunar XPRIZE, but eventually failed to meet the criteria, and the competition ended with no winners.

Nevertheless, despite concern that its activity would be terminated for lack of money, SpaceIL continued its activity with the aim of adding Israel to the exclusive club of countries that have landed on the Moon, the only members of which are the US, the former Soviet Union, and China. The company undertook to launch its spacecraft this year, and has now announced its timetable for doing so.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 10, 2018

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