SpaceIL — an Israeli nonprofit competing in the Google Lunar X Prize competition — will use SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to launch its lunar lander into space, the group announced today in Jerusalem. The rocket will launch the team's vehicle into lower Earth orbit sometime in the second half of 2017. From there, the rocket will carry the lander farther into space, and then the spacecraft will propel itself the rest of the way to land gently on the Moon.

With today's announcement, SpaceIL is the first of the 16 Lunar X Prize teams to book a ride off the planet. If the mission succeeds, it will be the first Israeli mission — as well as the first private spaceflight mission — to soft-land a vehicle on the lunar surface. Eran Privman, CEO of SpaceIL, claimed the group isn't focused on the competition, but they are confident they can win. "I promise you once we land on the Moon, we’ll look around and see we are the first," he said.

SpaceIL is the first of the 16 Lunar XPRIZE teams to book a ride off the planet

Only three nations have ever landed a spacecraft intact on the Moon: the United States, Russia, and China. Many countries have slammed lunar orbiters or probes into the Moon to study its environment, but gently landing a spacecraft is trickier. The Moon is big enough to have a gravitational pull, but it doesn’t have an atmosphere to slow incoming objects. Spacecraft in lunar orbit must fire retro-rockets, very precisely, in the opposite direction of the Moon. That way they can slowly descend without slamming into the rock. It’s a delicate procedure that usually requires a lot of time and money, which is why only government agencies have been able to do it up until now.

Those challenges are what prompted the formation of the $30 Million Google Lunar X Prize competition. The X Prize Foundation is an international nonprofit that sponsors competitions to help benefit humanity; the contests are meant to inspire people to create technology that will benefit society — such as tools to measure ocean acidification or ways to convert carbon emissions into useful resources. The Lunar X Prize wants teams to come up with soft-landing lunar robots, using technologies and strategies that can help reduce the cost of spaceflight.

After gently touching down on the Moon, the landers must explore up to 500 meters of the surface, as well as transmit high-definition video and images back to Earth during thier exploration in order to qualify as winners. The teams competing in the contest have until December 31st, 2017 to get their spacecraft on to the Moon. X Prize doesn't specify how these teams should reach the Moon.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket during launch. (SpaceX)

The first team to reach the Moon before the end of 2017 will win $20 million, while the second team to do so will receive $5 million. The rest of the money will be awarded as bonuses for completing certain technical challenges. To get the grand prize purses, the teams must show that 90 percent of their funding came from private sources. That means the winner of the Lunar X Prize will also garner bragging rights: that group will be the first private mission to reach the Moon. With today’s announcement, SpaceIL is significantly ahead of most of the competition.

SpaceIL purchased room on the Falcon 9 launch through Spaceflight Industries, a private aerospace company that sets up "ride shares" on rockets. If you have technology you want to get into space, the company will help find room for your spacecraft on an upcoming launch; your technology will just have to share the ride with hardware from other organizations and government entities. This method allows commercial companies to get vehicles into space for a fraction of the cost of a full rocket launch. "We're almost like an airline," says Jason Andrews, co-founder of Spaceflight Industries. "If you had to pay for your own Boeing 737 to travel from Boston to Los Angeles, it'd be very expensive. But if you’re able to buy just a seat on that plane, it’s much cheaper."

Sparrow will be the last one off in the cosmic carpool

Spaceflight Industries purchased an entire Falcon 9 rocket at the end of September for an undisclosed amount. Buying a ticket to take a ride on the Falcon 9 cost SpaceIL around $10 million, Privman says — about a tenth of the cost of a full rocket launch. An individual launch would have taken up a significant portion of SpaceIL’s budget, which is currently about $36 million. SpaceIL is relying on philanthropists and donations for funding.

The team's lander, temporarily named "Sparrow," will sit in a designated capsule on the Falcon 9 rocket, among other secondary payloads. The rocket will deploy all other spacecraft aboard first, once it reaches lower Earth orbit — and Sparrow will be the last one off in the cosmic carpool. Once Sparrow is alone, the Falcon 9 will reignite the engine in its upper stage, carrying the lander a significant way toward the Moon. The lander will then detach from the rocket and propel itself the rest of the way to the lunar surface. When it lands, the Sparrow will "hop" across the Moon’s exterior before taking off and then landing 500 meters away using fuel left over in its tanks.

An artist rendering of SpaceIL's Sparrow after separating from the Falcon 9's upper stage. (SpaceIL)

It won't be the first time SpaceX has delivered a payload beyond lower Earth orbit. (The Falcon 9 transported NASA's DSCOVR space weather satellite to Lagrangian Point 1 — an area of space located 1 million miles away from Earth; that's more than four times the distance from our planet to the Moon.) However, SpaceX still hasn't fully recovered from the explosion of its Falcon 9 this past June. The company has yet to announce when its next launch will be, and many of the Falcon 9's previously scheduled launches have been postponed. It's possible these conflicts could push back the SpaceIL mission.

SpaceIL will spend that time before its 2017 launch developing the Sparrow lander, which hasn’t been built yet. The team is currently doing tests on some of the lander's electronics, and engineers will start the process of integrating these components into the lander very soon, says Privman. Now that SpaceIL knows how much room it’ll have on the rocket, it can adjust the Sparrow’s design to fit snugly.

The other competitors aren’t far behind

Meanwhile, time is running out for the other 15 Lunar X Prize teams. Now that one of the competitors has secured a rocket, the others have a little over a year to do the same. "At least one team needed to submit their notification of a launch contract plan, and it needed to be reviewed, verified, and accepted by us," says Chanda Gonzales, senior director of the Google Lunar X Prize. "The remaining teams have until the end of 2016 to also do all three steps — or they are done."

The other competitors aren’t far behind, though. Moon Express — the team from Mountain View, California — recently bought three launches from New Zealand-based spaceflight company Rocket Lab. The group plans to use Rocket Lab’s experimental Electron rocket, which has never flown before, to get three versions of its MX-1 lunar lander into space. The launches still need to be approved by the X Prize Foundation before they can be considered part of the competition. That’s what puts SpaceIL in the lead — though it’s not clear how long it’ll stay there.