SpaceIL

Pictures from Beit HaNassi (President house)

kfir — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 17:11:23 +0000

We’ve been honorably invited to present the spaceship model at the president house in Sukot.
More then 1000 kids and adults were pictures with the 1st Israeli spaceship !

The Science and Technology Minister, Rabbi Professor Daniel Hershkowitz, has also joined us -

As promised – all the pictures will fly to the moon in our spaceship.
You can watch the photos in our Facebook page – http://fb.com/SpaceIL

Busy Bees

Adi — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 19:46:28 +0000

Hello, all of our loyal followers, seldom visitors and new-comers. How was your week?
Ours was hectic. As you might recall from last you’ve heard from us here plans were made for a swift campaign through the USA. Indeed, Kfir and Yonatan headed to the team summit, with the help of NASA:

And here a taste from the closed session on team’s master agreement

And later on at BINA, where Yonatan made a good impression, according to the raving reviews left on our facebook page:

Between all of those and the meetings, they even manage to find the time to interview for Chanel 10.
In the meanwhile, third head collaborator Yariv attended the Globes convention, the Ministry of Education, Presented SpaceIL to PR companies who had visited Israel, GarageGeeks and did I mention we all still have our day jobs?
I’d say it’s time to rest, but rumor has it there a race to the moon…
Hope to catch you there first!

–Adi Mendelowitz

Another USA Escaped

Adi — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 21:18:02 +0000

Our undaunted conductors have set sail for another quick tour at Uncle Sam’s.
This time, though, is a Team Summit in Mountain View, CA, USA, where the two host sites will be NASA Ames and SETI. They boys are excited and delighted to meet and greet the formidable competition.
Afterwards, they’ll head to Bina LA where our dearest Yonatan Winetraub will give a talk to intellectual young Israelis and Jewish American.
In between, the boys have managed to cram in a few meetings in LA, San Francisco and New York. Alas, the wonderfull Bina event must be the closing number, for there’s no rest for the weary and much work to be done.

Wish the boys a good flight (You can do so on our facebook page).

Till next week!

–Adi Mendelowitz

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

admin — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 20:32:21 +0000

That’s where you’ll find SpaceIL’s rocket.

Oh, it was a good day. It started off before the previous has had the chance to end. Team SpaceIL gathered from high and low, from every which end of the country to come behold the experiment that tested a few highly-regarded key ingredients to the final mix. Some came in as early as the prior day, whilst others, such as myself, drove at 3 AM so as to make it by 4:30 AM to the middle of nowhere in northern Israel. We were cold, we were tired, we were anxious (To say the least), but at least we had the pleasure of the company of Guy Grimland (The Marker) by our side.

Firstly, the launch pad was assembled. A few grabbed the parts while others shone their flashlights at them, since it was still dark. Secondly, final adjustments were made to the rocket – both hardware and software-wise. Then, a few members took the the parts, via SUV’s, far away from the rest of us (It’s always safety first with Team SpaceIL), assembled everything together and made magic (Or rather – pure, unadulterated and beautiful science) happen.
We counted down till we saw from afar the white trail of smoke as the rocket took flight. After a few moments of tense silence, we caught sight of the parachutes, holding close the mid-air-disassembled parts of the rocket. It landed safely, without any harm to it, close by.

By every standard, from first to last, this is a great success. Everything worked smoothly and as predicted, and we got a whole lot of data to crunch.
Amazingly enough, this was all accomplished without a single drop of coffee that day. So much planning ahead probably made us oblivious to our earthly, corporal demands. No doubt, this bodes well as to what lies ahead.

Yes, this indeed was a great day.

Can You Feel It In The Air?

admin — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 09:58:49 +0000

Tomorrow morning all the teasing will come to a grinding halt as Team SpaceIL will gather, somewhere in northern Israel, and make one very lucky rocket touch the sky!

SpaceIL is getting ready for some algorithmic action

admin — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:16:56 +0000

Team SpaceIL does its best to not only talk the talk, but also walk the walk.
We’ve gathered early this morning to have an experiment, in preparation for our rocketry surprise.
We used a small remote-controlled helicopter to parachute a camera from 120 meters, used to test our stabilizing algorithm.
First time the helicopter took flight, it went up too fast, and due to winds, crashed and broke one of its rotors, but fear not! Our team consists of resourceful people who like to plan ahead.
The rotor was quickly fixed, and we were able to repeat the experiment a couple of times.

Here’s Yonatan Winetraub explaining Channel 2 News about today’s endeavor.

And here’s our payload on its way up:

All in all, we hope this good day was an auspicious occasion.

Our surprise

admin — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 18:30:19 +0000

Our little surprise is about 16.53 Lb (7.5 kg) and about 5.9 feet (1.80 meter). It’s meant to reach 1.2 km, which will make our (Non-profit) organization the first civilian body to ever accomplish that in Israel (It took a while, but we got all the required permissions). It’ll reach that said height with a starting force of about 11G, and it has two parachutes. For now, we’ve invited our 80 volunteers (Notice the growth?) and their families.

It’s going to be quite the milestone. Well, I suppose it won’t even be the penultimate accomplishment, considering what lies ahead, but that as it may, it’ll be great!

So, care to guess what’s cooking?