{"id":19593,"date":"2015-10-08T00:35:48","date_gmt":"2015-10-07T16:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/israeli-based-spaceil-gets-set-for-2017-moon-race-with-spaceflights-help\/"},"modified":"2015-10-08T00:35:48","modified_gmt":"2015-10-07T16:35:48","slug":"israeli-based-spaceil-gets-set-for-2017-moon-race-with-spaceflights-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/israeli-based-spaceil-gets-set-for-2017-moon-race-with-spaceflights-help\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli-based SpaceIL gets set for 2017 moon race with Spaceflight\u2019s help"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_204030\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-204030\" style=\"width: 620px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-204030 size-full-width\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/SpaceIL-Lunar-Lander-620x465.jpg\" alt=\"SpaceIL-Lunar-Lander\" width=\"620\" height=\"465\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/SpaceIL-Lunar-Lander-620x465.jpg 620w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/SpaceIL-Lunar-Lander.jpg 1022w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-204030\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A rendering of the planned SpaceIL robotic lander. Credit: SpaceIL<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Israeli-based Team SpaceIL has signed up to launch a robotic lander to the moon on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in the latter half of 2017, thanks to an arrangement with Seattle-based Spaceflight.<\/p>\n<p>SpaceIL will be a \u201cco-lead\u201d customer for the launch, the organizers of the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize competition said in a news release on Wednesday. That makes SpaceIL the first team to provide official verification of its launch contract, and confirms that efforts to put the first privately funded spacecraft on the moon by the end of 2017 will be an honest-to-goodness competition.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-188079 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/pluto1.png\" alt=\"pluto\" width=\"250\" height=\"189\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/pluto1.png 250w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/pluto1-200x151.png 200w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/pluto1-132x100.png 132w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\"><br \/>\n<strong>Science journalist Alan Boyle<\/strong>&nbsp;is the author of &#8220;The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made A Big Difference.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe magnitude of this achievement cannot be overstated, representing an unprecedented and monumental commitment for a privately funded organization, and kicks off an exciting phase of the competition in which the other 15 teams now have until the end of 2016 to produce their own verified launch contracts,\u201d said Bob Weiss, vice chairman and president of X Prize. \u201cIt gives all of us at XPRIZE and Google the great pride to say, \u2018The new space race is on!&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Two other teams \u2014 California-based Moon Express and Pennsylvania-based Astrobotic \u2014 have announced plans to send their own probes to the moon before the contest\u2019s 2017 deadline, but they still have to have launch contracts verified. Under the X Prize rules, at least one team had to verify its contract by the end of this year to allow the Google-backed competition to proceed.<\/p>\n<p>SpaceIL laid out its mission plans on Wednesday during a news conference in Jerusalem, attended by Weiss and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. The team aims to send a 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) lander on a looping trajectory to the moon, and then have it hop on the surface while sending imagery back to Earth.<\/p>\n<p>Just last week, Spaceflight announced that it had secured a SpaceX launch in 2017 to put a variety of small satellites into Earth orbit. Wednesday\u2019s announcement confirms that SpaceIL\u2019s lander will be one of the prime payloads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A rendering of the planned SpaceIL robotic lander. Credit: SpaceIL Israeli-based Team SpaceIL has signed up to launch a robotic lander to the moon on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in the latter half of 2017, thanks to an arrangement with Seattle-based Spaceflight. SpaceIL will be a \u201cco-lead\u201d customer for the launch, the organizers of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2670,21,2340,2700],"class_list":["post-19593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-google-lunar-x-prize","tag-space","tag-spaceflight","tag-spaceil"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19593"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}