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Israel's Beresheet moon landing attempt ends with a crash

Landing on the moon is hard, but SpaceIL still achieved historic milestones during the mission.

Amanda Kooser
Freelance writer Amanda C. Kooser covers gadgets and tech news with a twist for CNET. When not wallowing in weird gear and iPad apps for cats, she can be found tinkering with her 1956 DeSoto.
Jackson Ryan Former Science Editor
Jackson Ryan was CNET's science editor, and a multiple award-winning one at that. Earlier, he'd been a scientist, but he realized he wasn't very happy sitting at a lab bench all day. Science writing, he realized, was the best job in the world -- it let him tell stories about space, the planet, climate change and the people working at the frontiers of human knowledge. He also owns a lot of ugly Christmas sweaters.
Amanda Kooser
Jackson Ryan
3 min read

Israel's Beresheet would have been the most unlikely lunar lander in history, but the spacecraft didn't survive its reach for the moon's surface Thursday.

SpaceIL's live broadcast followed the tense maneuvers needed to get the lunar lander down to the Sea of Serenity on the near side of the moon. The Beresheet team members worked in the control room as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu watched from a spectator area.

The landing process suffered some glitches when the main engine cut out and mission control lost communication. The disappointed team reacted calmly to the failure.

The failed mission will be remembered as bittersweet.

"Well, we didn't make it, but we definitely tried, and the achievement of getting where we got is really tremendous," said Morris Khan, an Israeli entrepreneur who provided a large portion of the funding for Beresheet, as he addressed the observers near the control room. "We can be proud."

NASA commended the mission in a tweet: "We congratulate SpaceIL, Israel Aerospace Industries and the state of Israel on the accomplishment of sending the first privately funded mission into lunar orbit." Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 11 pilot, also had kind words. "Never lose hope. Your hard work, teamwork, and innovation is inspiring to all," he tweeted.

This was a mission of firsts. Beresheet was to be Israel's first moon lander, which would have put the country in an exclusive club that includes the US, Soviet Union and China. In addition, nonprofit SpaceIL would have been the first private, nongovernment group to set a lander on the moon's surface.

SpaceIL was originally conceived to compete in Google's Lunar X Prize which, in 2007, threw down a challenge to private companies to build a spacecraft that could land on the moon. The original deadline to claim the $30 million in prize money was originally 2014, but it was extended out until 2018 before an announcement that the prize would go unclaimed.

Although SpaceIL didn't quite make the deadline, the X Prize foundation was inspired by its attempt, creating a new prize dubbed the Moonshot Award. Originally, the foundation stated "for their achievement upon landing on the moon", X Prize would hand SpaceIL the first Moonshot Award -- and $1 million.

Of course, Beresheet did not make it to the surface in one piece but it did still land -- albeit with a little more force than hoped. As a result, the foundation said it would still be providing SpaceIL with the cash.

Beresheet launched on Feb. 21 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and overcame a brief technical glitch along the way. The lander was designed to take pictures of its surroundings and measure the moon's magnetic field. It was even able to snap one final, breathtaking image as it approached the lunar surface and beam it back to Earth.

SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) had placed a time capsule in the lander filled with digital files covering Israel's history and heritage. That time capsule was likely lost along with the spacecraft. 

The dream didn't quite come to fruition, but Beresheet's journey to lunar orbit was still an important moment in space history that made the moon feel more in reach for the world.

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Originally published April 11, 12:32 p.m. PT.
Update, 6:40 p.m. PT: Adds traditional information regarding X Prize and Beresheet's final image.