Context:

An Israeli spacecraft on its maiden mission to the moon has sent its first selfie back to Earth. The image shows a part of the Beresheet spacecraft with Earth in the background.

Beresheet spacecraft:

• NGO SpaceIL and state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries launched the unmanned Beresheet – Hebrew for Genesis — from Cape Canaveral in Florida on February 22.
• The 585-kilogram craft took off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from the private US-based SpaceX company.
• The trip is scheduled to last seven weeks, with the touch down due on April 11. So far, only Russia, the United States and China have made the 384,000-kilometre journey and landed on the moon.
• For Israel, the landing itself is the main mission, but the spacecraft also carries a scientific instrument to measure the lunar magnetic field, which will help understanding of the moon’s formation.
• It also carries a “time capsule” loaded with digital files containing a Bible, children’s drawings, Israeli songs, memories of a Holocaust survivor and the blue-and-white Israeli flag.

Other Missions:

• The Israeli mission comes amid renewed global interest in the moon. China’s Chang’e-4 made the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the moon in January , after a probe sent by Beijing made a lunar landing elsewhere in 2013.
• After China and Israel, India hopes to become the fifth lunar country with its Chandrayaan-2 mission. It aims to put a craft with a rover onto the moon’s surface to collect data.
• Japan also plans to send a small lunar lander, called SLIM, to study a volcanic area around 2020-2021.
• As for the Americans, who have not been back to the moon since 1972, a return is now the official policy of NASA, according to guidelines issued by President Donald Trump in 2017.