section_path: 21st century uncrewed soft landings and attempts/Beresheet (Israel/SpaceIL)
section_name: SpaceIL)
paragraph_text: SpaceIL)
  
  On 22 February 2019, Israeli private space agency SpaceIL launched their spacecraft Beresheet on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral, Florida with the intention of achieving a soft landing. SpaceIL lost contact with the spacecraft during final descent on 11 April 2019, and it crashed as a result of a main engine failure.
  
  The mission was the first Israeli, and the first privately funded, lunar landing attempt. Despite the failure, the mission represented the closest a private entity had come to a soft lunar landing at the time.
  
  SpaceIL was originally conceived in 2011 as a venture to pursue the Google Lunar X Prize. The Beresheet lunar lander's target landing destination was within Mare Serenitatis, a vast volcanic basin on the Moon's northern near side.