SpaceIL, the Israeli team which is among the finalists in the $30 Million Google Lunar XPRIZE, will not be ready with its robotic space explorer in time for the end of 2017 deadline, according to Spaceflight Industries, owner of the Falcon 9 rocket that will carry the winners to Earth’s satellite, Quartz reported Friday.
The first team that successfully completes the mission will receive the $20 million Grand Prize. The second team will get $5 million. Other participants will share smaller prizes adding up to $5 million. To win either of these prizes, teams must prove that 90% of their mission costs were funded by private sources, and be ready to launch before the end of 2017.
According to the group’s website, SpaceIL is leveraging Israeli expertise in micro-satellite technologies to build a “small, smart and a relatively cheap spacecraft.” The team is “applying know-how garnered from a defense related necessity (satellites) to a new purpose of space exploration.” The website also reveals that the SpaceIL spacecraft is “about the size of a dishwasher.”
While the other Google Lunar XPRIZE teams developed large rovers to move the required 500 meters on the Moon’s surface, in order to conserve mass, SpaceIL developed the concept of a space hop: to have the spacecraft land and then take off again with the fuel left in its propulsion system, and then perform another landing 500 meters away.
But not before 2018, apparently. SpaceIL spokesperson Revital Alcalay has revealed that “technical challenges” in fitting this dishwasher-size object with the rest of the cargo onboard have caused delays. Quartz quoted a Spaceflight executive who said the SpaceIL entry has not been scratched from the launch queue, but it will not be ready for launching by the end of the year – unless the organizers decide to extend the deadline.
The Israeli team says it is determined to stay in the race until the deadline, hoping for an extension. Quartz has issued a statement saying they “remain optimistic that we will see one (or more) teams successfully complete the mission requirements of the Google Lunar XPRIZE during the current timeline.”