This week SpaceIL launched its crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to finance its development of the first Israeli spacecraft to land on the moon. The SpaceIL team is the only Israeli team competing for the Google Lunar X Prize. SpaceIL is one of 33 international, non-governmental teams seeking to be the first to develop a craft that will “land safely on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters above, below, or on the Lunar surface, and send back two ‘Mooncasts’ to Earth” by the end of 2015.
According to the Times of Israel:
Called “A Dollar a Mile,” the campaign aims to raise one dollar for every mile to the moon on crowdfunding site Indiegogo. Crowdfunding is a platform that allows anyone to contribute to worthy projects and tech ideas, and has been used by numerous start-ups seeking seed funding to get their idea off the ground. SpaceIL decided to use the platform to complete its current funding round. The money will be used, the group said, to pay for the fuel needed for its spacecraft to move about the moon. They added that anything beyond the $240,000 mark will be used to fund educational projects in Israeli schools that teach the math and science skills kids will need to work on future space missions.
SpaceIL’s mission, as the organization describes it, is to successfully build, launch into space and land on the moon a space capsule, making Israel the fourth country in the world to achieve this. The capsule will constitute Israel’s entry into Google’s LunarX contest, which promises to award $30 million to a team that can land an unmanned, robotic craft on the moon and carry out several missions, such as beaming high-definition video back to earth and exploring the surface of the moon by moving, or sending out a vehicle that will move, 500 meters along the moon’s surface.
Daniel Saat, the business development manager for SpaceIL told the Times, ““We already have a prototype, and in the coming months we are going to start building the capsule itself.”
SpaceIL is the brainchild of three Israeli engineers, Yariv Bash, Kfir Damari and Yonatan Weintraub. Part of the organization’s goal is to inspire an “Apollo effect” in Israel “by creating real-time, exciting examples of science innovation, we will inspire kids to see themselves as part of Israeli science in the future and thus pursue educations in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).”
Crowdfunding allows individuals to participate in a project’s success and often comes with inventives. Investments can range from $18 for a chance to send a 140 character message that will be carried into space on the ship up to $100,000 that will allow the investor to be part of mission control for the launch. Already SpaceIL has raised $20 million of the $36 million it needs including a $16 million investment from philanthropist Sheldon Adelson.
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