SpaceIL

Israel Bonds and LaunchHouse welcomes Dr. Avi Barliya of SpaceIL, a non-profit organization, working to land an Israeli spacecraft on the moon, to Cleveland on Monday, December 9

SpaceIL was founded by three young Israeli engineers, who undertook upon themselves the challenge of the international competition, Google Lunar X-Prize: a global race for landing an unmanned spacecraft on the moon.

The team represents Israel at the competition, against 23 other privately-funded space teams from around the world. The prize to be awarded to the winners in the first place is $20 million.  Total overall prizes in the competition are $30 million. SpaceIL is committed to contribute the potential prize money for promoting science and scientific education in Israel.

Teams competiting in Google Lunar X-Prize must make a soft landing, operate the spacecraft across the lunar surface to a 500 meters distance and transmit HD video, images, and data back to Earth. SpaceIL chose to build the spacecraft as a mini – satellite. The target launch is 2015.

SpaceIL’s goal is to inspire a whole new generation of scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians – who are the building blocks of the Israeli “Startup-Up Nation”.

About Dr. Avi Barliya:

Avi holds a PhD in mathematics and computer science from the Weizmann Institute of Science specialized in computational motor control. For the last 10 years Avi has studied the human movement principals in the Weizmann institute focusing on how the brain perceives, plans and executes movements in general, and human locomotion and arm movements in particular. For a while, Avi was part of the research team of Primesense, bringing his expertise in human movement to the development of the Kinect.

For more information on SpaceIL visit http://www.spaceil.com.