Diary chronicles last days of Israeli astronaut

A small heap of paper that survived the disintegration of doomed space shuttle Columbia, a 38-mile fall to Earth and two months of exposure to rain and sun in a Texas field, has been painstakingly restored by forensic scientists, yielding the flight diary and notes of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon.

Scientists used computer image-enhancement technology and infrared light to read the charred and tattered pages and pieced some of them together like jigsaw puzzles.