Israeli Moon Lander Sends Selfie From 23,000 Miles Away
The Israeli lunar lander Beresheet takes a “selfie” on its way to the moon. Image by spaceIL
By Aiden Pink March 5, 2019
Beresheet, the Israeli lunar lander currently on its way to the moon, sent a selfie back to Earth from more than 23,000 miles away.
A plaque on the outside of the module, which is about the size of a washing machine, reads “small country, big dreams” and “Am Yisrael Chai” – the people of Israel live.
Beresheet, the Hebrew word for Genesis, launched last month from Cape Canaveral in Florida. It is a joint project of the company SpaceIL and Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.
If Beresheet successfully lands in April, it will be the first time a private-sector initiative reaches the moon, and Israel will be the fourth country to make it there, after the United States, the Soviet Union and China.
Beresheet suffered from a computer glitch last week but recovered fast enough to carry out a key maneuver, the Times of Israel reported.
Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
