Israeli astronaut 'brought joy to troubled country'

Israel’s first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, gave a troubled country something to cheer about when he blasted off on January 16 on the space shuttle Columbia.

The emergency that developed just before landing brought back a familiar sense of dread.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office said in a statement: “The government of Israel and the people of Israel are praying together with the entire world for the safety of the astronauts on the shuttle Columbia.

“The state of Israel and its citizens are as one at this difficult time.”

Ramon, 48, is an air force colonel and the son of a Holocaust survivor. His air force career included the bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. The Israeli media carried live broadcasts of the lift-off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and he was on the front page of every newspaper.

Ramon “is fulfilling everyone’s dream, to be the first Israeli in space,” Israel’s Channel Two commentator said just before lift-off last month.

The station was broadcasting the planned landing when the Columbia lost communication with ground controllers. Ramon’s 79-year-old father was at the Channel Two studios in Jerusalem at the time, but the station said he would not be available for comment.

Ramon’s wife, Rona, and their children were in Texas, where the space shuttle was to land.

Ramon began preparing in 1997 to join a space shuttle crew as a payload specialist. He spent much of Columbia’s 16-day flight aiming cameras in an Israel Space Agency study of how desert dust and other contaminants in Earth’s atmosphere affect rainfall and temperature.

For a few days, Ramon’s journey diverted attention from the grinding conflict with the Palestinians.

The Israeli enthusiasm came partly from the fact that Ramon is one of the country’s top air force pilots, considered among the nation’s military and professional elite. There’s even a popular new television drama about the air force called Wings.

Israeli author Tom Segev said last month: “It’s a distraction from the feeling that this country is in really bad shape, the feeling of desperation, of helplessness, confusion, anger and fear.”

Ramon has logged thousands of hours of flight time and was part of the first Israeli squad to pilot American-made F-16 fighter jets in 1980. He fought in the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and in the 1982 war in Lebanon.

Ramon was one of the fighter pilots who destroyed an unfinished nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, a senior Israeli government official said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Ramon, whose mother and grandmother survived the Auschwitz death camp, honoured those who endured the Holocaust. He carried a small pencil drawing titled Moon Landscape by Peter Ginz, a 14-year-old Jewish boy killed at Auschwitz.

He also packed a credit-card sized microfiche of the Bible given to him by Israeli President Moshe Katsav and some mezuzas – small cases that are hung on door frames of Jewish homes and contain inscriptions from the Bible.

Ramon’s father gave him family photos to take into space and a brother had a letter stowed away in the shuttle that Ramon read in orbit.

Israel’s own two-decade old space programme has been beset by costly failures. The launch of a 50 million US dollar spy satellite was aborted in 1998 when a problem was detected two minutes after lift-off. Two other experimental satellites reportedly failed to orbit the earth properly.

Astronauts on board Columbia

:: Commander Rick Husband, 45, Air Force colonel from Amarillo, Texas. The former test pilot was selected as an astronaut in 1994 on his fourth try. He made up his mind as a child that that was what he was going to do with his life.

“It’s been pretty much a lifelong dream and just a thrill to be able to get to actually live it out,” he said in an interview before Columbia’s launch, his second space flight.

:: Pilot William McCool, 41, Navy commander from Lubbock, Texas, and father of three sons. He graduated second in his 1983 class at the Naval Academy, went on to test pilot school and became an astronaut in 1996. This was his first space flight.

:: Payload commander Michael Anderson, 43, the son of an Air Force man who grew up on military bases. He was flying for the Air Force when Nasa chose him in 1994 as one of only a handful of black astronauts. He travelled to Russia’s Mir space station in 1998. The lieutenant colonel was in charge of Columbia’s dozens of science experiments. His home is in Spokane, Washington.

:: Kalpana Chawla, 41, emigrated to the United States from India in 1980s and became an astronaut in 1994. On her only other space flight, in 1996, she made mistakes that sent a science satellite tumbling out of control. Other astronauts had to go on a space walk to capture it.

:: David Brown, 46, a Navy captain, pilot and doctor. He joined the Navy after a medical internship, went on to fly the A-6E Intruder and F-18. He became an astronaut in 1996. Columbia’s mission was his first space flight.

:: Laurel Clark, 41, a Navy diving medical officer aboard submarines, then flight surgeon who became an astronaut in 1996. On board Columbia to help with science experiments. Has an eight-year-old son. Her home is in Racine, Wisconsin.

:: Ilan Ramon, 48, a colonel in Israel’s air force and the first Israeli in space. His mother and grandmother survived Auschwitz death camp. Father fought for Israel’s statehood alongside his grandfather. Ramon fought in the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the Lebanon War in 1982.

He served as a fighter pilot in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, flew F-16s and F-4s. He was chosen as Israel’s first astronaut in 1997, then moved to Houston the next year to train for shuttle flight. His wife and four children live in Tel Aviv.