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SpaceIL President Morris Kahn decided Wednesday to go where no one had gone before, during Israel's Independence Day ceremony, to announce that he would contribute again financing a second attempt to land an Israeli spacecraft on the moon.
Kahn, a South African-Israeli billionaire philanthropist, made the announcement by lighting a torch on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
Beresheet, the world's first privately financed lunar lander, crashed into the moon's surface in April during a landing attempt, apparently due to a technical incident that caused the engine to shut down main mid-landing.
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Kahn, 89, put on his glasses to read his prepared lines, but then looked up and fluttered, thanking all the people in the project and making an announcement about Beresheet 2.
The Beresheet spacecraft described before its launch. (Courtesy / Israeli Aerospace Industry)
"Now, I heard the Prime Minister tonight declare that we would return to the moon," Kahn said about Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks. "On the night of the landing, when we had not succeeded and we were two moments from the end, we did not go. The Prime Minister turned to me and asked, "How much will it cost? And I gave him my opinion. estimate.
He asked, "How long will it take? "And I said two years," Khan said, bursting with laughter, while he was repulsing attempts to get him back to the screenplay and reciting the traditional chorus to the flashlight.
"He asked me if I was ready to contribute again and said I would think about it," Kahn continued. "Tonight, the answer is yes."
The ceremony's organizers eventually turned off Kahn's microphone before he finished speaking and continued to switch to the next torch.
Last shot that Beresheet sent before crashing on the surface of the moon on April 11, 2019. (screenshot of YouTube screen)
Kahn provided much of the $ 100 million (NIS 370 million) needed to build and launch the first spacecraft – an innovative approach that represents a fraction of the cost of previous Moon-funded moon-landing efforts. State.
The project was a joint venture between SpaceIL and Israeli Aerospace Industries Israel, funded almost entirely by private donations from well-known Jewish philanthropists, including Kahn, Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, Lynn Schusterman and others.
Kahn had already announced, a few days after the crash, that he was launching the Beresheet 2 project, stating, "We have launched something and we have to finish it. We will put our flag on the moon. "
Following this announcement, Israel Aerospace Industries, a Beresheet partner, announced that it would be pleased to participate in future SpaceIL projects.
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