Israel’s Beresheet spacecraft captured a stunning selfie on its historic journey to the Moon. The photo shows the robotic lander looking back at Earth from a distance of 23,363.5 miles. It was launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX on February 21 and is projected to reach the lunar surface on April 11. Read More for a video about its mission and additional information.
The 1,322-pound Beresheet lander will measure the Moon’s local magnetic field to help understand how it formed, and it’s also holding a digital “time capsule” that contains over 30 million pages of data, including a full copy of English-language Wikipedia, the Bible, children’s drawings, memories of a Holocaust survivor, Israel’s national anthem (Hatikvah), the Israeli flag, and a copy of the Israeli Declaration of Independence.
