First Privately-Funded Moon Landing Fails.

The first privately-funded mission to the moon failed when a small Israeli spacecraft crashed to the surface after engine trouble and communications glitches during the final descent on Thursday. 

“We had a failure in the spacecraft,” 

Opher Doron, the general manager of Israel Aerospace Industries’ space division, which collaborated on building the spacecraft, said afterward. 

“We unfortunately have not managed to land successfully."

Beresheet reached the launchpad and was headed to space aboard a SpaceX rocket in February. It orbited the moon. The landing was the riskiest part of the mission.

If it had succeeded, the robotic lander, named Beresheet, which means “Genesis” or “in the beginning” in Hebrew, would have been the first on the moon built by a private organization, and it would have added Israel to the United States, the former Soviet Union, and China.

“Well we didn't make it, but we definitely tried,” 

said Morris Kahn, an Israeli telecommunications entrepreneur and president of SpaceIL, the nonprofit that undertook the mission. 

“And I think the achievement of getting to where we got is really tremendous. I think we can be proud.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was at mission command and stated, 

“If at first you don’t succeed, you try again.”