SpaceIL chairman and co-founder light 1st Independence Day torch

SpaceIL chairman Morris Kahn and one of the company’s co-founders, Kfir Damari, light the first torch at Israel’s 71st Independence Day ceremony in Jerusalem.

Twelve torches are lit in total — to symbolize the 12 tribes of Israel in the Bible — by people who are seen to have made an outstanding contribution to society.

Following the Israeli spacecraft Beresheet’s failure to land safely on the moon last week, Kahn announced he was launching project Beresheet 2, effective immediately, adding: “We started something and we need to finish it. We’ll put our flag on the moon.”

Kahn provided a large chunk of the $100 million (NIS 370 million) required to build and launch the spacecraft — a novel approach that came at a fraction of the cost of previous, state-funded efforts to land on the moon.

Damari, along with Yariv Bash and Yonatan Winetraub, hatched the plan to send an unmanned spacecraft to the moon while they were in a bar in the city of Holon one evening.