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Israel's first moon lander came up just short in its historic touchdown bid this afternoon (April 11). The robotic Beresheet spacecraft, built by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), aimed to become the first Israeli craft, and the first privately funded mission, ever to land softly on the moon. But the little robot couldn't quite make it, crashing into the gray dirt around 3:25 p.m. EDT (1925 GMT). Mission control lost communications with the spacecraft when it was about 489 feet (149 meters) above the moon's surface.

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...

Daniel Saat, business development manager for SpaceIL, is reasonably confident that the lunar lander the Israeli spaceship organization is working on will beat out the competition and reach the moon, winning the big $30 million prize being offered by Google in its LunarX challenge. “Our intelligence sources tell us that Israel’s LunarX satellite is one of the two or three top contenders to win this contest,” Saat told The Times of Israel on Sunday. And he’s also pretty certain the 140 kilogram spacecraft will actually land safely on the moon and perform the stunts Google requires to award the prize...

When Jason Sherwin told his parents he wanted to be an astronaut, they weren't thrilled. Jews, they reminded him, "don't have a good track record" in outer space. Notwithstanding the "Jews in Space" bit from Mel Brooks's "History of the World: Part I," they're right. Arguably, the first Jewish astronaut was Elijah. According to the Bible, "a fiery chariot with fiery horses suddenly appeared... and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind." He didn't come back down. In modern times, the first Jew in space, Judith Resnick, died in the Challenger explosion of 1986. In 2003, Ilan Ramon of...

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (Nov 27, 2003) - In the continuing quest to build the first privately funded reusable spacecraft, IL Aerospace technologies (ILAT) introduced today their newest team member: Professor Claude Oiknine, one of Israel's top scientist and pioneer of the "Shavit" satellite launcher among other high-profile space programs. Prof. Oiknine was appointed Chief Technical Officer of ILAT where he will lead the Israeli effort in every technical capacity. In addition to this appointment, the team received another boost from AERODAN Systems LTD, an innovated aeronautical engineering firm comprised of more than 25 top-notch industry experts. AERODAN has agreed to...