An Israeli spacecraft will become the first private craft to land on the moon when it touches down on the lunar surface later on Thursday.
In a first for commercial space travel, non-profit organisation SpaceIL is hoping to see its Beresheet craft successfully complete a landing on the moon, and in the process make Israel only the fourth country to manage the feat.
The lander – whose name is Hebrew for Genesis – took off almost two months ago from Cape Canaveral in Florida as part of a “ride share” with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, as the Beresheet mission could not afford its own rocket.
The four-legged spacecraft, which is around the size of a washing machine, has been circling the Earth in increasingly large orbits waiting to be captured by the moon’s gravity.
A time capsule is also on board the lander — which includes a picture of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, who died on the space shuttle Columbia in 2003 — as well as a lunar library containing 30 million pages on a disk from the US-based Arch Mission Foundation.
Mr Ramon’s widow, Rona, who was a big supporter of Beresheet, died of cancer in December.
The landing process for Beresheet is expected to begin just after 8pm on Thursday night.
