Israel's SpaceIL will not try second moonshot

The company issued a statement on Tuesday saying its lunar mission in April has been widely hailed as "an exceptional success," despite crash landing on the moon.

It says that "an attempt to repeat a trip to the moon is not enough of a challenge" and will instead search for a different mission.

The SpaceIL "Beresheet" spacecraft attempted to be the first privately funded lunar mission, but failed to make a controlled landing on the lunar surface.

Israel announced the plan in summer last year, with hopes of staking Israel's claim among the high-tech elite.

A successful operation would have made it only the fourth country to ever complete a moon mission.