JERUSALEM – An Israeli organisation announced plans Tuesday to launch thecountry’s first spacecraft to the Moon in December, with hopes ofburnishing Israel’s reputation as a small nation with otherworldlyhigh-tech ambitions.

The unmanned spacecraft, shaped like a pod and weighing some 585kilogrammes (1,300 pounds) at launch, will land on the moon on February 13,2019 if all goes according to plan, organisers SpaceIL told a newsconference in Yehud, central Israel.

The vessel will be launched via a rocket from American entrepreneur ElonMusk link>’s SpaceXlink>firm and its mission will includeresearch on the moon’s magnetic field.

Its first task, however, will be to plant an Israeli flag on the moon,organisers said.

The project began as part of the Google Lunar XPrize, which in 2010 offered$30 million (25 million euros) in awards to encourage scientists andentrepreneurs to come up with relatively low-cost moon missions.Three young Israeli scientists, Yariv Bash, Kfir Damari and YonatanWinetraub, decided to join the fray.

“We met in a pub and started to discuss what it meant,” Damari recalled.