NASA signs cooperation agreement with ISA on Beresheet 2 lunar mission

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On Wednesday, NASA signed a collaboration agreement with the Israel Space Agency to work together on the Beresheet 2 lunar mission, which began preliminary work in December 2020.

The agreement builds on a collaboration between the two agencies in 2019, during which NASA and the Israel Space Agency worked together on the first SpaceIL Beresheet mission to the Moon. The mission ended in April 2019 with the spacecraft crash landing on the lunar surface after a technical failure caused the spacecraft's main engine to malfunction, rendering the spacecraft unable to stop its speed.

Now the mission is back on track. Beresheet 2 – this time with two landing modules designed to reach the surface of the moon, – will be launched in 2025. NASA will provide SpaceIL and the Israel Space Agency with advanced communications systems important for tracking the spacecraft and other technologies. In return, Israel will provide experimental technologies aboard the two landers and on the orbiter that will provide various measurements and data that will be shared with NASA.

The Statement of Intent was signed on Wednesday by NASA Associate Administrator Robert D. Cabana and Israeli Space Agency CEO Uri Orion. NASA will provide full support for the Beresheet 2 mission in accordance with the agreement.

“Cooperation with NASA and our new agreement is further evidence of the excellent relations between Israel and the United States and the intensification of cooperation on science and technology,” &ndash ; Israeli Minister of Science and Technology Ofir Akunis said at the signing.

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