The Israeli association SpaceIL stated that it will continue with its project to send a private spacecraft to the lunar surface, despite the X Prize foundation's announcement that none of the five finalists in the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition will win the monetary prize with a total value of 30 million dollars.
SpaceIL responded yesterday to the announcement of the end of the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition without a winner, and stated that it intends to continue in any case with its plan to send the first Israeli spacecraft to the lunar surface: "The SpaceIL association updates today that it continues to promote the project with full vigor while meeting the goal it set for itself to land a spacecraft Blue and white on the moon during 2018, thus Israel will become the fourth country in the world to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon," the company said in a press release yesterday.
According to her, "the project led by SpaceIL became along the way a national and educational project of enormous importance, which presents a complex technological challenge with tremendous significance for the Israeli space industry and for proving Israel's technological superiority."
As you remember, the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition was launched about a decade ago as the first private financing venture to reach the moon. The competition will come to an end at the end of March after an announcement was made on Tuesday about the end of the competition without a winner, this in view of the fact that none of the teams that qualified for the finals met the schedules defined by the organizers.
As part of the competition, the teams were required to land a private spacecraft on the moon, which could move across it for a distance of 500 meters and transmit high-resolution images to Earth. In January 2017, the SpaceIL association qualified for the final stage of the competition and remained a finalist alongside four other contestants: the Indian Team Indus, the Japanese Team Hakuto, the American Moon Express, and the multinational Synergy Moon.
In doing so, Israel became closer than ever to joining the prestigious circle of the three superpowers that have managed to reach the moon to this day: the USA, the former USSR and China. According to SpaceIL, it is the most advanced group in the race to land a spacecraft on the moon and the only one with a certain launch date by the end of 2018.
"XPRIZE foundation" which manages the competition, said as part of its announcement: "Despite the end of the competition, these days several ways to continue the competition are being considered".
The spacecraft is in advanced stages, and recently the tests of the propulsion system of the spacecraft, which are being developed at the Air Industry Factory, were successfully completed.
See more on the subject on the science website:
- The first Israeli lunar spacecraft project is in danger of closing
- Trump ordered NASA to return American astronauts to the moon
- Delivery service to the moon: Blue Origin offers to build a lander to deliver supplies to a manned base on the moon
- The space missions of 2018: from the world's most powerful launcher to the successor to the Kepler space telescope
- SpaceX plans to launch two space tourists next year for a flight around the moon
One response
In any case, there would be no winners because government companies are too involved for a private project to be considered