Israel is to launch its first moon mission this week, sending an unmanned spacecraft to collect data to be shared with NASA, organisers said on February 18.
The 585-kilogram (1,290-pound) Beresheet (Genesis) spacecraft is to lift off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida at around 0145 GMT on February 22.
Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and technology NGO SpaceIL announced the date at a press conference.
Mission control will be in Yehud, near Tel Aviv.
"We are entering history and are proud to belong to a group that has dreamed and fulfilled the vision shared by many countries in the world but that so far only three of them have accomplished," SpaceIL president Morris Kahn said.
Genesis will make its 6.5-million kilometre journey at a maximum speed of 10 kilometres per second, according to an IAI statement.
It will carry a "time capsule" loaded with digital files containing a Bible, children's drawings, Israeli songs, memories of a Holocaust survivor and the blue-and-white Israeli flag.
The $100-million project will measure the lunar magnetic field to help understanding of the moon's formation.
"This is the lowest-budget spacecraft to ever undertake such a mission. The superpowers who managed to land a spacecraft on the moon have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding," the IAI statement said. "Beresheet is the first spacecraft to land on the moon as a result of a private initiative, rather than a government."
The project started as a potential entry for the Google Lunar XPrize, which in 2010 offered a $30-million reward to encourage scientists and entrepreneurs to offer relatively inexpensive lunar missions. The contest closed without a winner in March 2018 but SpaceIL decided to keep working on the challenge.
