WATCH: Israeli Moon Lander Launches Successfully
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(JTA) — An Israeli spacecraft is officially on its way to the moon.
The lunar lander built by SpaceIL, an Israeli organization hoping to send a craft to the moon, successfully launched aboard a SpaceX rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida Thursday night. If it reaches the moon and lands successfully, it will make Israel the fourth country ever — after the Soviet Union, the U.S. and China, to land a spacecraft on the moon.
After separating from the rocket, the SpaceIL craft, named “Beresheet,” Hebrew for Genesis, will travel around Earth in progressively larger orbits, eventually entering the moon’s orbit and touching down for a landing there. That is expected to occur on April 11.
“Once, it seemed imaginary; today this is reality,” said Israeli President Reuven Rivlin in a video after the launch. “Beresheet landing on the moon is a giant step for all of Israel. This is a first-rate technological, scientific and and educational project.”
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
