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There may be life on the Moon after all: virtually indestructible beings that can withstand extreme radiation, sizzling heat, the coldest temperatures of the universe, and decades without food. These terrifying-sounding creatures aren't aliens but in fact microscopic Earthlings known as tardigrades, who likely survived a crash landing on the lunar surface by Israel's Beresheet probe in April, the organization responsible for their trip said Tuesday. Based on an analysis of the spacecraft's trajectory and the composition of the device the micro-animals were stored in, "we believe the chances of survival for the tardigrades...are extremely high," Nova Spivack, founder...

Morris Khan, Beresheet's largest funder and president of SpaceIL, announced on Saturday night that he is establishing Beresheet 2 to complete the mission of an Israeli spacecraft landing on the moon. "In light of the wonderful messages of support and encouragement and excitement I received from all over the world, I decided that we're going to establish Beresheet 2," Khan said. "We're going to put a new spacecraft on the moon and we're going to complete the mission. Tomorrow [Sunday] morning - first thing- we have a task force - we're going to sit down and plan...

'We started something and we need to finish it' SpaceIL chief: ‘Beresheet 2 starts tomorrow; we’ll put our flag on the moon’ After crash on lunar surface, billionaire Morris Kahn announces new project on-air, says mission team will meet Sunday to begin work on successor to Israel’s first moon lander Photo taken by the Beresheet spacecraft in which an Israeli flag can be seen on a plaque with the inscription, "Am Israel Hai," or "The Jewish People Lives," and in English, "Small country, big dreams," taken 37,600 kilometers from Earth. (Courtesy SpaceIL/IAI) Following the Israeli spacecraft Beresheet’s failure to land...

“Well we didn’t make it but we definitely tried,” said Morris Kahn the president of SpaceIL, the company that created the lander which appears to have crash landed on the moon today. I was watching the live feed of the attempted landing and with about 30 minutes to go they announced they had reached a point of no return. They were going for it. For a while it seemed everything was going well. The spacecraft dropped from about 23,000 meters above the moon to about 15,000 meters. The ship even snapped a selfie on the way down (that’s it above)....

Key Points Non-profit SpaceIL was aiming to become the first private entity to softly land a spacecraft on the moon’s surface. “We have a failure of the spacecraft ... we have not landed successfully,” SpaceIL said on the livestream of the landing attempt. At a cost of about $100 million, the “Beresheet” spacecraft was backed by private donors. A small lunar lander crashed into the surface of the moon on Thursday, coming just short of the venture’s ultimate goal. Non-profit SpaceIL was aiming to become the first private entity to softly land a spacecraft on the moon’s surface – a...

To date, three countries have landed on the moon. Today, that number may become four. Israel launched its first lunar mission, a spacecraft called Beresheet, on Feb. 21, riding piggyback on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It spent six weeks orbiting Earth in leisurely, ever-widening circles before slipping into orbit around the moon on April 4. It remained there for a week, preparing for the defining moment of the mission: attempting to touch down softly on the moon's surface. That moment comes today (April 11), around 3 or 4 p.m. EDT (1700 or 1800 GMT) — the exact time has...

Three days before landing attempt on April 11 in the Sea of Serenity, Israeli vessel executes move to tighten its orbit The Beresheet spacecraft snapped this picture of the moon's surface at a height of just 440 kilometersduring the lunar capture maneuver on April 4, 2019. (Courtesy Beresheet) After entering lunar orbit last week, Israeli spacecraft Beresheet on Monday morning successfully performed another maneuver as it entered ever-tighter orbits around the moon, before attempting to land on April 11 in the Sea of Serenity. The maneuver reduced the maximum distance of the spacecraft’s elliptical path around the moon from 750...

Tucked away inside Israel’s Beresheet lunar lander, currently on its way to the Moon, is a massive archive documenting humanity’s achievements. The collection of images, text and symbols is the first part of a project to build a “Lunar Library” and part of a bigger push to create a space-based archive of Earth. According to the Arch Mission Foundation (AMF), the library contains 30 million pages of human history that covers a wide range of subjects, languages and time periods, all stored on a DVD-sized archive made of 25 nickel discs that are each only 40 microns thick. An 84-page document...

On board Beresheet is a specially designed disc encoded with a 30-million-page archive of human civilization built to last billions of years into the future. The backup for humanity has been dubbed "The Lunar Library" by its creator, the Arch Mission Foundation (AMF). The disc aboard Beresheet is about the size and thickness of a DVD, but consists of 25 stacked thin nickel films that AMF insists can resist radiation, extreme temperatures and other harsh conditions found in space for billions of years. There is, of course, no way to test how long it will last, but if it survives...

The robotic lander, called Beresheet, launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket yesterday evening (Feb. 21) from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. If everything goes according to plan, Beresheet will zip around Earth for about six weeks in ever-widening orbits before heading toward its final destination. The craft will arrive in lunar orbit in early April and attempt a landing on the 11th of that month. Beresheet's lengthy stay in Earth orbit may seem surprising. After all, China's Chang'e 4 farside lander reached lunar orbit just 4.5 days after its Dec. 7 liftoff (though Chang'e 4 didn't actually touch...

SpaceX launches Israel's Beresheet lunar rover to Moon | Global News | Streamed live on Feb 21, 2019

A nonprofit Israeli consortium said Monday that it hopes to make history this week by launching the first private aircraft to land on the moon. SpaceIL and state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries told a news conference that the landing craft — dubbed “Beresheet,” or Genesis — will take off from Florida, propelled by a SpaceX Falcon rocket on its weekslong voyage to the moon. The launch is scheduled late Thursday in the United States, early Friday in Israel. It had been originally slated for last December. […] The small craft, roughly the size of a washing machine, is equipped with instruments...

SpaceIL's Beresheet — Hebrew for "In the Beginning" — will become the first privately funded mission to launch from Earth and land on the moon, and the first spacecraft to propel itself over the lunar surface after landing by "hopping" on its rocket engine to a second landing spot. The mission marks yet another milestone, not only in the history and technical arc of space exploration, but also in how humankind goes about space exploration. SpaceIL was founded in 2011 to compete in the Google Lunar XPrize, a program that planned to award US$30 million to the first privately funded...