What we'll see

Beresheet's camera system is a color (RGB), 8-megapixel, Imperx Bobcat B3320C, with Ruda optics. It has a 60-by-80-degree field of view, and a resolution of 2488 by 3312 pixels. That’s a nice wide field of view with plenty of pixels, similar (to the extent that they can be compared) to the human eye, or roughly equivalent to a DSLR with a 21 mm focal length.

The first images we see from that camera should be pretty pics taken while Beresheet is traveling to the Moon; SpaceIL hopes to download some through its ground station hub in Kiruna, Sweden. Once in lunar orbit, Beresheet will switch to NASA's Deep Space Network. NASA offered use of the DSN in exchange for installing a laser retroreflector and getting a copy of all the data from Beresheet's lone science experiment, a magnetometer. More pretty pictures and initial magnetometer data should come in through the DSN prior to landing.

During the final descent, Beresheet will shoot video — another Chang'e-like landing video, yay! — and take still images a few hours after touchdown. SpaceIL says they hope to have some images downloaded, processed and released within a few hours after landing.

The rest of the mission

Under the original terms of the $30 million Google Lunar XPrize, Beresheet would have hopped to a new location at least 500 meters using its main engine after landing. SpaceIL no longer plans to do this, preferring not to press their luck after having touched down on the Moon successfully. It will be a big deal for Israel to become the fourth country to soft-land on the Moon (following Russia, the United States, and China), and the team would rather have an intact lander bearing the Israeli flag rather than one that ends up in pieces after a risky second maneuver.

In any case, Beresheet will not be long-lived. The mission will nominally last 2 or 3 Earth days — not a terrible deal, considering the relatively cheap $100 million price tag. Recall that Beresheet is landing at sunrise, when temperatures are not too hot, and not too cold. Those benign conditions won't last for long; as the Sun rises, so will the temperature, which will cook the lander. The cameras are only designed to withstand temperatures up to 90 degrees Celsius in storage or 85 degrees while in use; lunar midday temperatures can top 100 degrees. If Beresheet manages to survive the heat, the lunar night will likely finish it off. Chang'e-4 recently recorded a low of -190 degrees Celsius on the far side. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how long the lander survives, and you can bet that radio enthusiasts on Earth will listen for its signals long after the primary mission ends.