Since 02-04-03
Memorials to the Columbia Space Shuttle Crew - Ilan Ramon
Since 02-04-03
Ilan Ramon, Formal
Representing the Israeli Space Agency, Ilan Ramon will serve as payload specialist on this, his first spaceflight. He will be working with the Red Team.
ILAN RAMON, 48
Payload Specialist; Israel
Months before he was to become
the first Israeli to travel into space, Ilan Ramon paid a visit to Yad Vashem,
the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. The Air Force colonel was searching for an
appropriate object to take with him on the mission when museum curators showed
him a tattered pencil drawing of the Earth as seen from the moon. The sketch had
been done by Peter Ginz, a 16-year-old Jewish boy who died in Auschwitz in 1944.
Ramon, whose own mother and grandmother survived Auschwitz and emigrated to
Israel after World War II, was captivated. “I feel that my journey fulfills the
dream of Peter Ginz 58 years later,” he said just before carrying the fragment
aboard the Columbia.
Ramon joined the space shuttle mission as a payload specialist, running
an experiment that tracks dust particles from sandstorms. But it was the
astronaut’s role as a symbol, not a scientist, that inspired his war-fatigued
and hero-starved countrymen. Television devoted endless hours and newspapers
countless inches to his mission. FIRST HEBREW ASTRONAUT SINCE ELIJAH, trumpeted
Israel’s most popular newspaper, Yediot Achronot, referring to the Jewish
prophet who, according to the Bible’s Book of Kings, ascended to heaven aboard a
fiery chariot. Kindergarten teachers instructed their kids to post newspaper
photos of Ramon on the walls; a mattress manufacturer said he would name a line
after him; the Israeli Postal Authority planned a commemorative stamp.
Born in Tel Aviv and raised in Beer Sheva, Ramon served with distinction as a fighter pilot in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. In 1981, he was one of eight F-16 pilots who bombed Iraq’s unfinished Osirak nuclear reactor, after flying for hours without detection over enemy territory. Ramon was tapped to become Israel’s first astronaut in 1997. He moved to Houston with his wife and four kids, ranging from 5 to 15, and spent 4½ years in training.
Although he was a self-described secular Jew, Ramon honored his heritage and religion aboard the flight. He asked NASA to provide him with kosher food, tried to observe the Sabbath on board and carried both a pocket-size version of the Bible presented to him by Israeli President Moshe Katzav and a Torah scroll given to him by a concentration-camp survivor. “From space, Israel appeared small and very beautiful,” he declared. “The quiet that envelopes space makes the beauty even more powerful, and I only hope that the quiet can one day spread to my country.”
A devoted family man, Ramon stayed in touch with his loved ones from space via e-mail. “Although everything here is incredible, I can’t wait to see you. Big hugs and kisses to the children,” he wrote his wife a couple of nights before his death. Ramon’s father, Eliezer Wolferman, was reading some of those messages live on Israeli TV when NASA lost contact with the astronauts. Wolferman was taken to a side room to watch the broadcast off-air. Devastated, he left for Houston later that night to join Ramon’s widow and children. “Ilan regarded this mission as something he could do for the world,” Ramon’s sister-in-law Orna Bar told NEWSWEEK. “But all that doesn’t matter now because he’s gone. We’re all suffering terribly right now.” It is a loss shared by millions of her countrymen.