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(solemn piano music)

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It has never been done before.

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A private company has launched a spacecraft to the moon.

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It is descending,

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and is less than 20 miles from the lunar surface.

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We're about to start the landing process.

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We're going to orientate the spacecraft

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in the right direction.

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We're now about 850 kilometers from our landing site.

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We're at an altitude of 25 kilometers.

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SpaceIL is guiding its lunar lander

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from this mission control room in Tel Aviv.

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Founder Yonatan Winetraub is hoping

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this will be a decade-old dream come true.

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So, the spacecraft's name is called Beresheet,

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which means "in the beginning" in Hebrew.

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It's also Genesis, the first book of the Bible.

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This is the first spacecraft of its kind.

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It's the first private interplanetary mission.

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The entire project is the cheapest space mission ever built.

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It's a hundred million dollars

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and that's comparing to billions of dollars

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that it cost space agencies to put something on the moon.

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(upbeat music)

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We will start firing the main engine

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to start breaking the spacecraft.

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We have a few seconds at the beginning of the process,

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where the spacecraft will decide by itself

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if everything is OK.

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If not, it aborts the landing and continues in its orbit.

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Beresheet is less than

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ten minutes from reaching its goal.

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The scientists and engineers who've built the spacecraft

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brace for landing.

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The difficult part about spacecraft is that

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you build it here on Earth,

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and it needs to functions out there on the moon.

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And Earth is very different than the moon.

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Gravity is different, air resistance,

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all the radiation problems, it's very, very different.

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So, a lot of times you're just guessing.

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Space is very cold, but the side

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that is facing the sun is very hot.

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The contrast between very hot when

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the sun is pointing towards you,

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to very cold when you're in the shade,

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and you need to test it and there are ways to do that.

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Israel has been branded the startup nation.

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It is in the top ten of high-tech

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startup countries worldwide.

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Many of the winner ideas have

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been conceived in Tel Aviv bars.

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That is where space engineer Yonatan Winetraub,

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along with his two friends, Kfir Damari and Yariv Bash,

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spawned the bold idea of privately

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launching a spacecraft to the moon.

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So, we started working, making the plans,

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and from the very beginning, it was very clear

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the way to reduce cost would be to make a small spacecraft.

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And this guy comes to us and says, "Do you have any money?"

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And I remember I'm looking at Yariv, Yariv's looking at me,

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and we're not sure what to say to this,

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because we just got started, I barely owned a car back then.

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And we said, "No, we just got started."

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And he says, "Come to my office,

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I'll give you a hundred thousand dollars."

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And that person was Morris Khan.

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This was a great idea.

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And I asked them, "Do you have any money?"

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And the three of them looked at each other

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and they said, "Money?

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"What's that?"

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Morris Khan is an

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Israeli high-tech billionaire.

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His initial one hundred thousand dollar contribution

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ballooned to nearly forty-five million dollars,

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almost half of the budget.

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And I began to become aware

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of what the potential is for this project.

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You've actually got several very wealthy people

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who're involved right now in developing

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the possibility of space travel.

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Elon Musk is planning to go to Mars.

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I'm not sure that actually we're ready

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to settle on other planets.

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But it'll come. It'll come.

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Beresheet is just six minutes from landing.

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It took eight years, numerous designs,

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and manufacture modifications,

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to get the spacecraft to the right ratio of fuel to weight,

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keep the vehicle light, and cost effective.

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Last January, Beresheet was packed

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and flown for launch to Cape Canaveral.

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It's a big moment.

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We are really excited.

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We are sure that you are also.

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So one thing we always do at every event

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is we take a selfie.

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Three, two, one!

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To the moon!

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(inspirational music)

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We got it to space by using a Falcon 9 rocket

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and we ride-share it, so we had another

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communication satellite that we were just on top.

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So we were riding a shotgun ride on the Falcon 9 rocket.

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( audience cheers)
(inspirational music)

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There on your screen you can see

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the second-stage engine has lit

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with gorgeous red-orange glow of that nozzle.

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There you can see on your screen

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visual confirmation of deployment

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for the Nusantara Satellite.

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And it deployed us to a high Earth orbit

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and we started our mission from there.

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The ingenuity in SpaceIL's design

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is that each time the spacecraft orbited the Earth,

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it would briefly fire it's main engines,

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sling-shooting Beresheet into a further orbit

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out into space until it finally intersected

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with the moon's orbit of the Earth.

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(inspiring piano music)

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When NASA launches to the moon,

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they usually have a dedicated rocket

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that basically fires the engine,

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and puts the spacecraft in trajectory towards the moon.

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That is a very simple, straightforward,

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takes four days to get to the moon.

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We couldn't afford that,

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because we couldn't afford a full rocket.

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We went around the Earth many, many times

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until the moon came in the right position

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and we captured with it.

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And that journey took six and a half billion kilometers

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or four million miles to do.

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So, we were waiting to the right moment

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and then the spacecraft fired an engine

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and started going around the moon.

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This is a very delicate, complicated procedure.

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It's like dropping a pin out of the fourth floor

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and hitting an eye of the needle.

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And that is extremely difficult.

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And we were able to capture with the moon on the first try.

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And the spacecraft orbited around the moon.

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This was something that no private organization

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had done before.

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We are in the breaking process.

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The breaking process is working well.

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We can see the spacecraft slowing down.

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Now the challenge is we need

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to lower the orbit and make it tighter and tighter

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to prepare for the landing.

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And in the final loops, we were just

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ten miles above the surface.

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And that is scary low.

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Because at seven, you have mountains.

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Because the spacecraft is so far away,

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we don't have a joystick here on Earth

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to say, "Oh, we see some rocks, go left or go right."

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Because by the time the radio signals

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traveling at the speed of light go back and forth,

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we already missed couple of seconds.

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We're coming in at the speed of faster than a bullet

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towards the surface of the moon.

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We have to slow it down on rockets.

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If the engine shuts down abruptly,

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in the middle of the landing,

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we're for sure to crash into the moon

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The spacecraft is just

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a few minutes from touchdown.

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If something goes wrong,

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it is past the abort landing option.

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We have passed the point of no return,

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we are in the landing process.

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The spacecraft is now pointing at

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about fifteen degrees to the horizon.

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So, this wonderful selfie picture

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from an altitude of about 22 kilometers

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is on the background of the moon

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as we are approaching the landing site.

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(suspenseful music)

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We seem to have a problem with our main engine.

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We are resetting the spacecraft, try to enable the engine.

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(suspenseful music)

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We have the main engine back on.

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The main engine is back on,

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but we have lost communication with the spacecraft.

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We had a failure in the spacecraft, we unfortunately have

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not managed to land successfully.

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At just several miles above the moon,

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an errant computer command shut off the main engine.

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It took several seconds to restart the burn,

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but it was too late.

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The spacecraft slammed into the lunar surface

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at a speed of a thousand meters per second.

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Well, we didn't make it.

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But we definitely tried.

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And I think that the achievement of getting to where we got

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is really tremendous.

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I think we can be proud.

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(applause)

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If at first you don't succeed, you try again.

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(foreign language)

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For those who built Beresheet,

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the mission was a successful failure.

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It was a bittersweet celebration.

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We took a first step in bringing the cost down

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and making space affordable for non-government agencies

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and I hope that others would build on that

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and then continue it forward.

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Here we were on a shoestring budget,

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privately funded and trying to do

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something that hasn't been done before.

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So, it represents a new paradigm of space exploration.

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I think it's all about the journey.

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Look, in the bar?

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I could never imagine we would get to that point

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where we have a lander that actually got to the moon.

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And we have a nation that is cheering for the next mission.

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But you gotta start from somewhere

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if you want to get to the moon.

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And I think this is the greatest journey I've ever been on.

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We need to try again.

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And this is why I'm so happy that we're gonna do

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a Beresheet number two to finish the job.

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(inspirational music)