SpaceIL’s Beresheet 2 lunar mission is now a no-go after the non-profit organization announced that it is no longer going to make a second attempt at landing on the moon.
What prompted the Israeli team to abandon the moonshot?
Israel’s Moon Mission
Just this past spring, SpaceIL’s Beresheet failed to successfully land on the moon when it crashed mere moments before it reached the surface. Despite the failure to become the first successful privately funded mission to the moon, the team still made history as the seventh nation to orbit the moon and still received the $1 million Moonshot Award for touching the lunar surface. And just days after the crash, the team announced that it will be making a second attempt at a moonshot.
However, in a recent statement, SpaceIL announced that it will no longer attempt to go to the moon, and instead will seek out another significant objective. In the statement, SpaceIL says that the original Beresheet’s journey was already received as successful and record-breaking, which is why having a shot at it again would not feel as though it is challenging enough to raise the bar.
‘Dare To Dream’
The original plan of going to the moon again was backed up by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and company chairman Morris Kahn who provided a large part of the budget to build the original Beresheet. Now, there are still no further details as to what Beresheet 2’s goals will be. In the Facebook announcement, the image SpaceIL posted simply said “Dare To Dream.”
Even with the successes of having built the spacecraft with the lowest budget, being the only privately funded moon mission, and being the smallest spacecraft to get there, one of Beresheet’s main missions was also to advance Israel’s space program and to inspire children to pursue science, technology, math, and engineering.
With new Beresheet 2 goals, perhaps SpaceIL will also inspire children to “dare to dream.”
