Morris Kahn, the primary sponsor of SpaceIL’s Beresheet spacecraft, announced on Saturday evening the funding of a second Israeli spacecraft, Beresheet 2.0. A new group of donors will fund a second Israeli attempt to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon. The first craft was able to orbit the moon, but then control was lost just 150 meters from the surface and it crashed.
The team has already been appointed and will be led by Kahn. They will already begin working on Sunday.
“I’ve decided that we are going to actually establish Beresheet 2,” Kahn said on Saturday. “We are going to build a new [spacecraft], we’re going to put it on the moon, and we are going to complete the mission.”