Viewing parties are planned across Israel for Thursday night April 11, as Israel’s historic spacecraft Beresheet appears right on schedule to land on the moon’s Sea of Tranquility at approximately 10-11pm Israel time (3-4pm Eastern Daylight Time in the United States).
The privately funded Israeli unmanned spacecraft, launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on February 21, has made spectacular progress with the remote aid of the engineering teams of SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in IAI’s control center in Yehud near Ben-Gurion International Airport.
Beresheet was successfully captured by the lunar orbit on April 4, a complicated maneuver that spelled do-or-die for the mission.
On April 8, the engineering teams in Israel maneuvered Beresheet closer to the moon’s surface, from 750 kilometers (466 miles) to 210 kilometers (130 miles), putting it into an elliptical orbit around the moon.
You can watch the historic landing process live on Thursday on SpaceIL’s Facebook page.
Click here to see ISRAEL21c’s timeline of amazing milestones on Israel’s journey to the moon.
Click here to see additional images and videos taken by Beresheet on its way through outer space.
