Only three of the world superpowers have landed on the moon -- and Yonatan Winetraub said Wednesday night it's high time a small country plant its flag on the lunar surface, too.

"We want to get little Israel to the moon," said Winetraub, co-founder of SpaceIL, an Israel nonprofit, during a livestreamed news conference Wednesday night in Florida.

The country is taking a huge step toward that goal Thursday night, when its first moon-bound probe is launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

If the mission is successful, Israel will become the fourth country to reach the lunar surface on April 11. It will also become the first commercial lander to touch down on the moon.

MOON-BOUND: Israel sets its sights on the moon as NASA plans its first return trip there in almost 50 years

Israel's lander will not carry humans to the surface and the United States remains the only country to leave human footprints on the moon. The other two countries are the Soviet Union in September 1959 and China in December 2013 and January 2019.

SpaceIL -- the only Israeli contestant competing in the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition that ended earlier this year with no winner -- started working on the project in 2011. It cost just $100 million.

"We punch far above our weight," said Sylvan Adams, a SpaceIL donor and Canadian-Israeli businessman and philanthropist, on Wednesday. "With Israeli innovation, with Israeli can-do, we've managed to do this on a shoe-string budget and it's something we're very proud of."

The spacecraft will conduct experiments to measure the moon's magnetic field. Work on the project first began in 2011.

NASA officials said last year they will work with the Israel Space Agency to "cooperatively utilize" the probe, being built by Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL. The agreement essentially means both countries will benefit from this mission.

Israel's historic launch comes as NASA shifts its focus to returning to the moon as a stepping stone for a mission to Mars.

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has made it clear that returning to the moon for the first time since 1972 is a priority for his administration.

His $19.9 billion NASA budget for the current fiscal year tasks NASA with launching the first flight without a crew for Orion -- the spacecraft meant to take humans to Mars -- by 2022, followed by a launch of Americans around the moon in 2023.

Additionally, it allows the agency to begin working on the foundation of a Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, saying it would "give us a strategic presence in the lunar vicinity that will drive our activity with commercial and international partners and help us further explore the moon and its resources and translate that experience toward human missions to Mars."

Alex Stuckey covers NASA and the environment for the Houston Chronicle. You can reach her at alex.stuckey@chron.com or Twitter.com/alexdstuckey.