Recently, SpaceIL, an Israeli private group that crashed a probe on the lunar surface last year, announced that it would undertake a second attempt to land on the moon, the Beresheet 2, to take place in the first half of 2024. Interestingly, SpaceIL is seeking financial support from the United Arab Emirates for its second moonshot, according to the Times of Israel.
SpaceIL launched the Beresheet 1 as a secondary payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in February 2019. After a long, leisurely voyage to the moon, the Israeli lunar probe performed what aerospace circles call a “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly” when it attempted to land, which is to say, it crashed.
The second Beresheet will be a more complex undertaking than the first. The next Israeli attempt to land on the moon will consist of an orbiter and two smaller landers, which will touch down on separate areas of the moon.
One of the other interesting aspects of the new Israeli moonshot is its international quality. Seven countries on five continents are said to be interested in participating in the Beresheet 2 mission. One of them is the United Arab Emirates.
Thanks to the initiative of the Trump administration, a number of Muslim countries have established diplomatic and economic ties with Israel, the UAE among them. The UAE, itself a space-faring power thanks to the Hope mission’s launch to Mars, would seem to be a natural fit for a partnership with Israel to land on the moon.
The UAE is also a signatory of the Artemis Accords, an international agreement that NASA is putting together to establish the rules of peaceful and cooperative space exploration. Israel is not yet a party to the accords.
The Gulf Arab nation has also announced its own mission to the moon — a lunar rover dubbed Rashid. The rover is also scheduled to land on the moon in 2024.
Both Israel and the UAE have astronauts. One Israeli spacefarer, Ilan Ramon, perished during the space shuttle Columbia disaster. A second Israeli astronaut, Eytan Stibbe, is slated for a mission on the International Space Station sometime in 2021. A UAE astronaut, Hazzaa Al Mansoori, has already done a stint on the ISS. Sultan Al Neyadi is training for his own mission on the ISS at NASA’s Johnson Spaceflight Center. The UAE plans to choose two more astronauts in 2021. Both Israeli and UAE astronauts may be selected for missions to the moon under the Artemis program.
The prospect of a joint Israeli-Arab mission to the moon stems from two Trump initiatives.
The Artemis program, NASA’s latest attempt to return astronauts to the lunar surface, has sparked a veritable scramble for the moon. A number of nations, separately and in alliance with NASA, see the moon as the next great destination for exploration, science, and commerce.
The Abraham Accords, which have established peace between Israel and a number of Muslim states, have started a wide variety of joint commercial enterprises between the Jewish state and its former enemies. The UAE has especially become a destination for Israeli businesspeople in search of deals with a former enemy. To steal and swap the old slogan from the sixties, the rule of the day is “make money, not war.”
President Trump, who will be ending his presidency sooner than he had hoped, is hated by many and beloved by many. No middle ground exists for the most outsize personality to have occupied the Oval Office in American history. One thing that history will record is that Trump’s presidency was filled with accomplishments, something his many enemies are loath to acknowledge.
Two of those accomplishments are the Artemis return to the moon program and the Abraham Accords. The Beresheet 2 mission to the moon exists as a curious convergence of the two achievements. Trump, who will always smart from being turned out of office after only one term as president, can look upon Artemis, the Abraham Accords, and much else with a great measure of satisfaction. An Israeli-Arab moon mission will be a tangible result of the Trump presidency.
Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration titled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond. He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.
