This is the final selfie taken by Israel’s Beresheet spacecraft, moments before it crashed into the Moon’s surface.
The story got lost amid all the space news of late; from Japan blasting a crater into an asteroid, to that black hole picture and a landing on the dark side of the moon.
This story went relatively unnoticed, but was quite important because it signified the entry of yet another nation into the space race.
Israel launched the world’s first ever privately funded, budget lunar landing mission.
It’s considered a budget mission, because of the way it was done, paving the way for smaller countries to follow suit in the future.
The Israeli start-up SpaceIL hitched a ride on board a Space-X Falcon-9 rocket in February, to get Beresheet on a trajectory to the Moon.
Two weeks ago, they managed to descend from Lunar orbit, but sadly a technical glitch saw the space craft crash into thousands of pieces in the Moon’s northern hemisphere.
This is the moment immediately after that facts became clear … including from the mission sponsor, billionaire Morris Khan.
Khan has since announced a new mission that will see them build a new space craft and making another attempt.
It’s not clear if they are planning the same sort of approach, but if they succeed next time, they’ll be only the fourth country to do so.