In 2019, Israel’s SpaceIL successfully launched its robotic lunar lander, Beresheet, into space. Although the vehicle crashed on landing, the mission made the Jewish state the seventh country to make a lunar orbit and the fourth country to attempt a soft landing on the Moon.
Despite that impressive achievement, Israel is not exactly synonymous with space exploration or even deep-space technology, although it does have an active space-tech sector in areas such as surveillance satellite development.
Experts say now is the time to accelerate deep-space efforts because this area is expected to become significant in the upcoming decades.
Mining data on the Moon
One of these experts is Roy Naor, cofounder and CEO of Israel-based global innovation hub Creation-Space, which recently launched Space Venture, a unique accelerator program to create and promote space-tech startups.
“Currently, there is no lunar economy, no client on the Moon who requires anything, but in 10 years from now, there will be,” Naor tells ISRAEL21c.
Naor says that mining resources on other planets will most likely be the first viable economic activity to emerge.
“The first resource to mine will be data from data centers, not minerals, because it would be cheaper, more sustainable and good for humanity,” notes Naor.
Keep reading at israel21c.org.
SpaceIL CEO Shimon Sarid and Creation-Space COO Chen Dudai are both Technion alumni.
