“We didn’t make it.”
By Denise Chow
An Israeli spacecraft attempting to make history by becoming the first privately funded craft to land on the moon suffered an engine failure during its descent and crashed onto the lunar surface.
The Beresheet spacecraft was to have touched down on the moon between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. ET. But officials with SpaceIL, the Israeli nonprofit organization behind the mission, reported that they lost contact with the four-legged spacecraft as it neared the surface of the moon.
“We didn’t make it,” SpaceIL chairman Morris Kahn said during a livestream of the landing attempt. “The achievement to getting to where we got is really tremendous.”