CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION, Fla. — A communications satellite for an Indonesian company may be the primary payload for Thursday's SpaceX Falcon 9 launch, but that isn’t the one grabbing headlines.

  • SpaceX Falcon 9 launch scheduled for Thursday night
  • Rocket will carry 3 payloads — 1 is an Israeli lunar lander
  • It's the 1st privately funded mission to the moon
  • FULL COVERAGE: Destination Space

One of the three payloads on the rocket is an Israeli lunar lander.

After the Falcon 9 rocket launches, the lander for Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL will separate and make a two-month journey to the moon.

If it successfully lands, it will be the first privately funded mission to the lunar surface. Israel will also join the U.S., Russia, and China as the only nations to land on the moon.

While on the moon, the spacecraft will take photos and study the moon's magnetic field.

The lunar lander mission is only expected to last a couple of days.

As for the other two payloads, the Indonesian communications satellite will provide voice, data, and video distribution service throughout Southeast Asia. 

The third payload is a satellite for the U.S. Air Force Research Lab. It's called the Space Situational Awareness S5 mission and is designed to detect small satellites in orbit so that the U.S. military knows what else is out there.

A 32-minute launch window for the Falcon 9 rocket opens at 8:45 p.m. Thursday at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

SpaceX will attempt to land the first-stage booster on a drone ship off the coast, and in a first on the East Coast, the company could try to recover the payload fairing, or nose cone, using a ship with a large net.