Israel Heads For The Moon with Privately Funded Spacecraft

Israel Heads For The Moon with Privately Funded Spacecraft

Aiming to become the fourth country to make a soft landing on the moon, Israel's non-profit SpaceIL has announced it will launch a spacecraft from Florida's Cape Canaveral Thursday on board a Falcon 9 rocket.

The unmanned craft, weighing 1,300 pounds and standing approximately five feet tall, will then begin an about seven-week journey to the moon, from where it will send back images of the rocky surface and conduct experiments on the lunar magnetic field.

The spacecraft is called "Beresheet," a reference to the first words of the Bible in Hebrew: "In the beginning..."