President Reuven Rivlin hosted Wednesday the opening ceremony of Beresheet 2, a project of Israeli spacecraft organization Space IL that plans to launch the second Israeli spacecraft on the moon after its first attempt ended in 2019 with the vehicle crashing on the moon's surface.

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The ceremony was attended, among others, by Science and Technology Minister Yizhar Shai, Space IL CEO Shimon Sarid, CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Boaz Levy, and students and volunteers from all over the country.

The spacecraft will split into three parts when it reaches the moon – two landing crafts and an orbiter that would circle the moon for years, conducting experiments and collecting data, the Science and Technology Ministry said in a statement.

Students in Israel and worldwide will be able to receive data from the spacecraft and perform scientific experiments.

IAI will lead the development, planning, and engineering of the systems of Beresheet 2. SpaceIL plans to launch the spacecraft by the first half of 2024. The budget of the project is approx. $100 million, funded mostly by international collaborations, and the rest received from donors and sponsors.

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Located beyond the Green Line, Ariel University – like other Israeli institutions in Judea and Samaria and the Golan Heights – has traditionally been excluded from such ventures. Its admission was granted following the US announcement that it no longer considers Israeli settlements to be a violation of international law.

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Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis has spearheaded the move, and he is expected to sign the new scientific collaboration agreement with his American counterpart in the coming weeks.

The new agreement seeks to replace a memorandum of understanding signed in 1972 by then-Israeli Ambassador to the US, Yitzhak Rabin, which explicitly excluded territories seized by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War from collaborations of this nature.

Akunis told Israel Hayom that the new agreement "is a direct result of the American recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and Secretary of State Pompeo's declaration that the settlements in Judea and Samaria do not violate international law."

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