Double Life – To the Moon

By Daniela Fubini*

So we go to the moon. We as Israel, as a tiny country in a bullying neighborhood, we as a people lacking big numbers anywhere but in entrepreneurship, we as the Start-Up Nation in fact. At 03:45 during the night between Thursday and Friday, 22nd of February, the tiny – him too – spacecraft SpaceIL, named “Bereshit” will begin its journey to the moon, where it will make a landing, then move 500 meter on the moon’s surface, and finally send back high resolution images to us, on the old planet Earth. Now, that is a plan. Fun fact: it all started with a Google challenge. Less fun fact: Google eventually dropped the challenge, but evidently we were too much into it already, and a good Israeli knows that worse than a challenge you didn’t take is only one you abandoned.

So here we are, with a 03:45 alarm set and our noses up to the sky. And all of this would be interesting mainly to space enthusiasts and maybe to the government, always ready to pride related statements, if it wasn’t for the mission page of the website http://www.spaceil.com, where all the focus is given to a new “Apollo effect”. That is, a strong push the coming generations of Israelis towards science, engineering, technology and mathematics. And why? Because as everybody knows in Israel, the Start-Up Nation is fueled by brainpower, and currently we face a severe shortage of scientists and engineers, something in the volume of ten thousand and more, to keep the Israeli hi-tech alive, if not kicking.

So for those who just wanted to point their nose to the moon and wait for amazing pictures Made in Israel, sorry: there is a lot more at stake in this project. Enjoy the pictures, though!

*Daniela Fubini (Twitter @d_fubini) lives and writes in Israel, where she arrived in 2008 from Turin via New York.