Israel’s first lunar lander leaves earth

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has blasted off from Florida carrying Israel’s first lunar lander on a mission that if successful will make the country only the fourth nation to ever to achieve a controlled touchdown on the moon’s surface.

The unmanned robotic lander dubbed Beresheet – Hebrew for the biblical phrase “in the beginning” – soared into space from the Cape Canaveral air force station on Thursday night local time on top of a nearly 100m (328ft) tall rocket.

Beresheet, about the size of a dishwashing machine, was one of three sets of cargo carried by the Falcon 9, part of the private rocket fleet of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s California-based company SpaceX.

The rocket’s two other payloads were a telecommunications satellite for Indonesia and an experimental satellite for the US air force.

Beresheet was jettisoned into Earth orbit about 34 minutes after launch, followed 15 minutes later by the release of the two satellites, according to a SpaceX webcast of the event.

via Guardian