Israel’s first unmanned interplanetary spacecraft will launch in the beginning of 2019 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. If it lands on the Moon two months later, as hoped, Israel will join an exclusive club of countries—U.S., Russia, and China—that have sent spacecraft to the surface of Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor. The spacecraft was recently named Beresheet, the Hebrew word for ‘beginning’ and Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament.

Yaron Lipman is a professor in the computer science and applied mathematics department at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel. Lipman heads a team doing cutting-edge research into the development of new technologies that can allow computers to capture images, analyze and manipulate them, and construct fragments into a coherent image. Lipman spoke to Weizmann supporters in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary recently.