(Screenshot/Channel 12)
By TOI Staff - May 8, 2019
SpaceIL chairman Morris Kahn decided Wednesday to boldly go where no one has gone before, veering wildly off script at Israel’s carefully staged national Independence Day ceremony to announce he will again contribute funding for a second attempt to land an Israeli spacecraft on the moon.
Kahn, a South African-Israeli billionaire philanthropist, made the announcement while lighting a torch on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
Beresheet, the world’s first privately funded moon lander, crashed into the lunar surface in April during an attempted landing, apparently due to a technical glitch that caused its main engine to stop mid-landing.
Kahn, 89, put his glasses on to read his prepared lines but then looked up and winged it, thanking all those in the project and making a little announcement about Beresheet 2.
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