Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Israelis Shoot for the Moon

A trio of Israelis is literally shooting for the moon, aiming to land a small spacecraft there by the end of next year.

Should they do so, Yariv Bash, Kfir Damari and Yonatan Winetraub would make Israel just the third nation to manage the feat, after the United States and Russia. The threesome are planning the mission in pursuit of the Google Lunar X Prize, a $20 million award intended to inspire “mavericks” to “take new approaches and think creatively about difficult problems, resulting in truly innovative breakthroughs.”

Competing against 28 other teams, the Israelis describe their spacecraft as “the size of a Coca-Cola bottle,” and are planning to spend around $10 million on the effort, far less than their rivals. The three come from Israel’s technology and science sector, and are drawing on the talents of 50 compatriot colleagues, as well as backing from the country’s Weizmann Institute of Science. The ambition and precocity they’re applying to the planned moon launch sound characteristic – Forbes’ Web site notes that Damari, a communications-systems expert, started computer programming at just 6.

In addition to its scientific component, the trio also see the project in patriotic terms, saying it’ll “really [put] Israel on the map as a start-up nation by doing something only the superpowers have done, and reigniting Israeli interest in science.”

Good luck to them!

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.