It may look like a 140kg dishwasher with legs, but the spaceship being developed by the Israeli Space IL team represents much more than simply the chance to win the Google-sponsored Lunar X Prize.

Space IL is a privately-funded, non-profit organisation which is one of 18 teams taking part in the competition to send a spaceship to the moon by the end of 2015, a competition which has a first prize of $20 million.

The huge purse however is not the real prize for the people involved in Space IL - they want to become the first team to land an Israeli spaceship on the moon and thus hope to inspire the next generation of engineers, scientists and astronauts.

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Yariv Bash, co-founder and team leader of the Space IL project told IBTimes UK:

"$20 million is a very nice motivation engine to reach the moon, but for us it is more about the future of Israel. We are not a company, we are not doing it for the prize money, we are doing it because we and our partners believe this project can have a serious effect on the future of Israel."

The spaceship Space IL is building is also a bit different. Currently codenamed Sparrow, the nano-spaceship is the size of a dishwasher (with legs) and when it gets to the moon it will be smallest spacecraft to ever land there.

By building this ground-breaking spacecraft, the organisation's vision is to create a similar effect the Apollo missions had in the US and inspire the next generation in Israel to think differently about science, engineering, technology and math.

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