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It launched into space in February and circled the earth several times before being slingshotted away. It traveled a total of four million miles and finally reached the moon, but not in the way Israeli scientists hoped it would. Their unmanned privately funded spacecraft was supposed to make a soft controlled landing there, but communication was lost when it was about 500 feet away from the moon's surface. And it was traveling toward it at 310 miles per hour. So, well, boom. If it had been successful, this would have been the first time a private organization made a controlled landing with the smallest budget. Still, the team and their nation's leader have suggested this isn't the end.
MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There were high hopes and high drama and in the end high disappointment for the people behind this ambitious privately funded $100 million project. From the beginning, it was the case of the little guy shooting for the moon or more precisely a soft landing on the moon. And they nearly made it with their spacecraft Beresheet which means genesis. There was a crowd that included the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu watching on.
But the team lost contact with the spacecraft in the last moments before the planned touchdown — apparently engine problems. And then the descent became uncontrollable and it crashed. In a moment of classic understatement, one of the project managers saying, I'm sorry to say but our spacecraft did not make it in one piece to the moon. If they had, Israel would have been just the fourth country to soft land on the moon after the old Soviet Union, the U.S. and China. Still though, a major achievement for an upstart group that began eight years ago as part of a Google competition.
They didn't make the deadline for that competition but decided to keep going with private funding and a lot of good old chutzpah. And they came oh so close to success. Still became only the seventh country to get to the moon if not successfully land on it. A lot of pride in Israel in this project. Plenty of people watching live including schoolkids at the president's home. And those behind the project not letting the less than soft landing put them off. For its part SpaceIL says quote, "Don't stop believing. We will continue to work hard." And then the Prime Minister Netanyahu saying quote, " We will try again. Next time it will be better." A sign perhaps of government involvement going forward quote, "I'm seriously considering investing now in the space program." Michael Holmes, CNN, Jerusalem.
