A small Israeli spacecraft, named Beresheet (Genesis) appears to have crashed on the moon on April 11. “We didn’t make it, but we definitely tried,” said Morris Kahnm, an Israeli entrepreneur and president of SpaceIL, the nonprofit that undertook the mission.
If the historic mission had succeeded, the robotic lander would have been the first on the moon built by a private organization, and it would have added Israel to just three nations — the United States, the former Soviet Union, and China — to have accomplished that feat.
But the craft stumbled on the last part of its journey, the landing, the riskiest part. At the end, with the main engine cutting in and out, communication was lost, and nothing more was heard from Beresheet. The mission cost about $100 million, the New York Times reported.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who attended the launch at the mission’s command center in Yehud, Israel, said, “If at first you don’t succeed, you try again.”
In February Beresheet had orbited the moon, an accomplishment that has been done by only five nations and the European Space Agency.

The annual Shabbat 1800 dinner went off without a hitch at Binghamton University, uniting a diverse group of college students and some faculty members, as it has been doing for a quarter of a century. In fact, it has held the national record for gathering the most Jewish students in one place for a Shabbat meal and celebration. But this year topped them all, with a total of 1,850 participants, Jewish News Service reported. To date, more than 50 college campuses throughout North America and abroad have replicated this Shabbat dinner model since its inception at BU in 1994.       Photo/Chabad of Binghamton