Space IL Beresheet

In 2007, the X Prize foundation launched the Google Lunar X Prize competition, to spark innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity, by encouraging privately funded teams from around the world to land on the moon.

Over 30 teams signed up and began fervently working toward this ambitious - and quite literally moonshot - goal. But alas, the deadline for this competition, after being extended several times, expired with no one reaching the moon.

Nevertheless, The Israeli team - Space IL - was not going to allow something like a cancelled competition get in the way of their goals and dreams. After years of hard work fundraising, designing, engineering, building partnerships and sparking a passion for space exploration among adults and children everywhere, they were determined to get to the moon!

On February 22 2019, their lunar lander - Beresheet - wqs launched atop a Space-X Falcon 9 rocket into low earth orbit. From there, and over a course of 7 weeks, Beresheet used its own engines to increase its altitude until it intersected with the moon's path.

On April 4th, Beresheet successfully achieved lunar orbit, becoming the smallest, cheapest spaceship to ever do so, and placing Israel among a select group of countries to achieve this goal.

On April 11th, Beresheet attempted to land on the moon, but like many befor her - she did not successfully touch down.
Nevertheless, Space IL successfully got their little spaceship onto the lunar surface - making Israel only the 6th country to acheive this goal.

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This Lego model of Beresheet was designed to be in minifig scale. I chose this scale over a larger, more detailed option, because it was important to me to emphasize the human element of this endeavor. This spaceship would not have reached the moon if not for the small donations of thousands of  people who helped kickstart the project, the hundreds of people who spent years working on this mission, the generous donation of philanthropist Morris Kahn and the three founders of Space IL - Yariv Bash, Kfir Damari and Yonatan Winetraub, whom I chose to honor and include in this submission.

No dream is beyond your reach, if you truly want it!