Israeli team signs first launch contract for a private lunar mission in 2017

An Israeli team, SpaceIL, has become the first group to sign a launch contract as part of the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition, which aims to achieve the world's first private lunar mission by 2017.

Credit: SpaceIL / Google Lunar XPRIZE

This week, Israeli team SpaceIL announced a major milestone in their race to the Moon, by signing a contract for a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch, with a mission scheduled for the second half of 2017. SpaceIL becomes the first team in the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition (GLXP) to produce a verified launch contract. Founded in 2007 by entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, the GLXP aims to inspire a new generation of private investment, in the hope of creating more cost-effective technologies and materials to overcome many current limitations of space exploration.

In order to win the $30 million competition, a team must achieve the following objectives:

• Land a robot on the surface of the Moon

• Travel 500+ metres over the lunar surface

• Send HD video and images back to Earth

Earlier this year, Google announced that a previous deadline would be extended to December 2017, provided at least one team could secure a launch contract by 31st December 2015. If no group had a contract by the end of 2015, the prize would expire without a winner. As of today, 16 teams remain in the competition, and five of those are thought to be making good progress. Israeli team SpaceIL booked a launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 and this week announced the contract.

Credit: SpaceIL / Google Lunar XPRIZE

“We are proud to officially confirm receipt and verification of SpaceIL’s launch contract, positioning them as the first and only Google Lunar XPRIZE team to demonstrate this important achievement, thus far,” said Bob Weiss, vice chairman and president of XPRIZE. “The magnitude of this achievement cannot be overstated – representing an unprecedented and monumental commitment for a privately-funded organisation, and kicks off an exciting phase of the competition, in which the other 15 teams now have until the end of 2016 to produce their own verified launch contracts. It gives all of us at XPRIZE and Google the great pride to say: ‘the new space race is on!’”

“Only three countries have ‘soft-landed’ a rover on the surface of the Moon: the United States, the former Soviet Union, and China. Now, the notion of the small state of Israel being added to this exclusive list looks more promising than ever,” said SpaceIL CEO, Eran Privman. “Last year, we made significant strides toward landing on the Moon, both in terms of project financing and in terms of the engineering design and now, we are thrilled to finally secure our launch agreement. This takes us one huge step closer to realise our vision of recreating an ‘Apollo effect’ in Israel: to inspire a new generation to pursue Science, Engineering, Technology, and Math (STEM).”

In addition to announcing their contract, SpaceIL has unveiled a new and improved design for its craft, based on consultations from world-renowned industrial designer, Alex Padwa. While other teams are developing large rovers to move the required 500 metres on the lunar surface, SpaceIL is working on the idea of a “space hop”: a craft that will land and then take off again with the fuel left in its propulsion system, and then perform another landing 500 metres away. The first physical components of the new model have already started to arrive at the SpaceIL lab.

On its website, SpaceIL claims to be developing “new algorithms, approaches, and designs that will likely have far-reaching impacts in future economic and scientific development.” Until now, only global superpowers with billion-dollar space programs have landed on the Moon. SpaceIL intends to show that this same accomplishment can be achieved for a relatively tiny budget, and that any private group, small country, or university can get involved in space exploration.