A private spacecraft from Israel will attempt a Moon landing Thursday

Last week, the 180kg vehicle fired its engines to enter into lunar orbit, and now the time has come for it to attempt a soft landing on the Moon. For SpaceIL, the big goal with Beresheet is simply to survive the descent and make a soft landing on the Moon. Thursday’s landing attempt comes as NASA has asked several US companies—some of which were also competing in the Lunar XPrize—to develop the capacity for small landers to deliver science experiments to the Moon.

Source: arstechnica.com