All this time, we had been taking selfie in Earth, but a selfie with Earth may appear to be almost next to impossible. But with Israel’s Beresheet Mission, this impossible deed came to be true. As per the reports from team members, the spacecraft sent back a selfie with Earth.
In the image, we could see only a part of the spacecraft and full Earth. This image was beamed back approx 37600 kilometres away to the mission control in Yehud, Israel. One of the team members wrote, “In the photo of Earth, taken during a slow spin of the spacecraft, Australia is clearly visible.”
The image shows plaques on spacecraft with inscriptions such as ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ (The Jewish nation lives) and ‘Small Country Big Dreams’. As per the team members, the cost of the entire mission with the launch stood around $100 million.
Beresheet took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on February 22 in an SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket. The spacecraft was launched in association with NGO SpaceIL and Israel’s Aerospace industries. The trip is supposed to last for 7 weeks and land down on Earth by 11 April.
Selfie from the Moon
The landing would make Israel the fourth country to have conducted moon landing. Prior to this, the record was held by China’s Chang’s e-4 that landed on moon in 3rd January. Although the landing is the main aim, there are yet a lot of things to be figured out.
The spacecraft is loaded with a lot of things which enables it to become one of the heaviest ones. This Israeli spacecraft is loaded with various scientific instruments, required to understand the formation of moon. It also carries stories of survivors from Holocaust, Bible, Children drawing and more.
Post China, India too may launch the Chandrayaan-2 Mission. It is supposed to collect information from the moon. Next comes USA with the aim of building up small space station on Moon’s orbit by 2026.