RAMAT GAN, Israel - A non-profit 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 will take off from Florida, to its weekslong voyage to the moon this week. If the SpaceIL mission is successful, Israel will become the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the moon, after the Soviet Union, United States and China. SpaceIL was founded in 2011 and originally competed for Google’s Lunar Xprize, which challenged private companies to try to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon. Kahn said he believes that “every Jew, not only every Israeli, will remember where he was when Israel landed on the moon.”

Source: thestar February 18, 2019 09:22 UTC