After completing the first of five pre-landing maneuvers on Sunday, Bereshit, the Israeli unmanned moon mission, was declared to be on-course for a Thursday lunar landing. In its first maneuver, the probe reduced the distance of the spacecraft named for the creation of the earth to only 750 kilometers (466 miles) from the moon. Officials at SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries expressed satisfaction over the weekend with the quality of photos the probe sent back to earth from the dark side of the moon. Subsequent maneuvers will position Bereshit a little more than 9 miles by early Thursday morning when it will begin its descent to the surface where it will remain operative for some 72 hours. The mission is the first by a private venture and at $100 million, the least costly. Its scientific goal is to unlock the secrets of magnetism found in moon rocks given that there is no magnetic field on or in the moon.