The current space flight was an "international flight". Officials during their one-hour after launch press conference, were effusive in praising the capabilities of Israel's first astronaut, Col. Ilan Ramon. Ramon was selected by NASA, the IDF and the Israel Space Agency to become Israel's first astronaut in 1997. Israel's space agency was formed in 1983, but its first opportunity to send someone up didn't come until President Bill Clinton offered to have an Israeli astronaut fly aboard the shuttle.
Ramon was informally assigned to the STS-107 shuttle flight in 1999. Technical delays had the flight rescheduled to January 2003.
"It's a drawing of Peter as he imagined himself looking at Earth from the moon," said Ramon, 48. "I really feel I'm taking his imagination and kind of fulfilling his wish of being there."
Mission Symbolism
"It's an important reminder of the contributions that victims of the Holocaust could have made had their lives not been lost. It's important for Holocaust survivors and all of Israel." said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group.
The influence of the Holocaust on Ramon's life view is due to his mother's survival of Auschwitz, a Nazi death camp where his grandfather and many other relatives perished. His father escaped from Berlin to Palestine in 1935 and was one of the original Israeli settlers who fought for the nation's creation during the 1940s.
After earning a degree in electronics and computer science from Tel Aviv University, Ramon entered the Israeli military, serving in both the 1973 Israeli-Arab war and the conflict in Lebanon in 1982. It has also been revealed that in 1981, Ramon was one of eight F-16 pilots who bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor. It was a milestone because the pilots flew over enemy Arab territory for hours without detection.
In addition to seeing combat, he once had to bail out of a jet after a midair collision.
Eventually, he reached the rank of commander of an F-16 fighter jet squadron, and in the mid-1990s took a post with the weapons acquisition and development branch of the Israeli Air Force.
Ramon said he never dreamt of becoming an astronaut but when the call came in 1997 he moved his wife and four children to Houston, joining NASA's astronaut class of 1998.
Israel is be one of more than a dozen nations to send up a crew member aboard the American space shuttle. National pride aside, Col. Ramon, on the 16-day research mission, will be responsible for a number of experiments. These include the use of a multi-spectral camera, to track dust particles from the sandstorms that blow from the Sahara over the Mediterranean and Middle East.
Another experiment assigned to the Israeli astronaut, is to examine the influence of weightlessness on the creation of bone cells in space, as compared to their development on earth.
The shuttle will be carrying stem cells engineered with genes turning them into bone cells. "We want to see how these cells behave in conditions of nongravity," stated a scientist from, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which is carrying on basic research in this field.
The findings may help understand mechanisms involved in development of bone depletion in astronauts, and the molecular influences involved in creating bone cells in space and on earth.
Col. Ilan Ramon 1955-2003
On January 16 at 5:39 PM Israel Time, the US space shuttle Columbia, lifted off effortlessly and flawlessly from its launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It marked a historic first for Israel. Prior to this space shuttle launch, Israel was one of only eight nations with a successful space program.
Col. Ramon has been trained as a Payload Specialist for this mission. Prime Minister Sharon spoke by phone to Ramon, the evening before the launch and said " I was excited, and I believe that the pilot was the most excited. We had a long talk and I can tell you that Col. Ramon is a man busting with national pride. Col. Ramon's flight and his mission into space are a source of honor to us all, and his success is yet another step in Israel's integration into the "space age".
As part of his personal gear, Ramon will carry "Moon Landscape," a drawing by Peter Ginz (1928-1944). who died in the Theresin conmcentration camp.
Although other Jews have flown in space, Ramon clearly sees the mission as symbolic. "To be the first Israeli astronaut is symbolic for all Israelis," he said. "And probably the fact that I'm a son of a Holocaust survivor is even more symbolic. I'm proof that despite all the hard time sthe Holocaust generation went through, we are going forward."
Ramon's participation in the shuttle flight has attracted considerable interest, both in Israel and the international press, perhaps because his life story mirrors the challenges and successes of his nation.