Ilan Ramon

Born Ilan Wolferman on June 20, 1954, in Ramat Gan, Ramon grew up in Ramat Gan and Beersheba with his older brother, Gadi.[7] His father, Eliezer, had fled Germany with his family in 1935 and later fought in Israel’s War of Independence.[7] His mother, Tova, was born in Poland, survived Auschwitz, and immigrated to Israel in 1949.[7] His grandmother also survived Auschwitz, a family history to which Ramon returned when explaining the significance he attached to traveling into space.[3]

Ramon moved with his family to Beersheba when he was eight and was an outstanding high-school student.[8] He graduated from high school in 1972 and began pilot training that year, but a medical problem interrupted his progress through the course.[7][8] After the Yom Kippur War, in which he served, he returned to training and entered the fighter-pilot track.[8] In 1974 he graduated from the Israeli Air Force flight academy with honors.[2] He later changed his surname from Wolferman to Ramon, following the example of David Ben-Gurion, who had encouraged Israeli soldiers to adopt Hebrew names.[7]

An exchange of letters in 1977 preserves an early expression of Ramon’s philosophical interests alongside his developing military career.[9] Then a 23-year-old Air Force pilot, he wrote to the philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz and asked, “What is man’s purpose in this world?”[9] Leibowitz answered five days later, and their correspondence survives in its entirety in the Yeshayahu Leibowitz Archive.[9]

Between 1983 and 1987, Ramon studied at Tel Aviv University, earning a bachelor’s degree in electronics and computer engineering.[7] During those years he met and married Rona Bar Simantov.[7] They had three sons, Assaf, Tal, and Yiftah, and a daughter, Noa.[7] His wife and children later accompanied him to Houston during his preparation for the Columbia mission.[10]

Ramon’s Air Force career included combat flying, squadron command, aircraft development, and responsibility for weapons systems before his selection for the American space program.[2][7] He trained and flew A-4, Mirage III-C, and F-16 aircraft, and participated in the Yom Kippur War and the First Lebanon War.[7][8] He returned to service after injuries and survived a midair collision involving two F-16s in 1982 by ejecting from his aircraft.[11][8]

In 1980, Ramon traveled to the United States with a small Israeli team to learn to fly the F-16 aircraft that Israel was preparing to receive.[7] He was among the team establishing Israel’s first F-16 squadron and served as a deputy squadron commander from 1981 to 1983.[7] In June 1981, he was one of eight pilots who took part in Operation Opera, the Israeli strike against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor.[12] The youngest pilot in the group, he was 26 at the time.[8] He planned the formation and flew in its vulnerable rear position.[13]

After serving as a deputy F-16 squadron commander, Ramon left the military to pursue his university studies and joined the development team for the Lavi fighter aircraft.[8] He also worked on other defense projects before returning to career military service in 1988.[8] His subsequent appointments included command of Phantom and F-16 squadrons and senior Air Force staff responsibilities.[8] From 1992 to 1994, he headed the Aircraft Branch in the Operations Requirement Department.[14] In 1994 he was promoted to colonel and placed in charge of developing weapons systems for the Israeli Air Force.[7]

By the time his career turned toward spaceflight, Ramon had accumulated extensive experience across several aircraft types.[2] His flying record included 1,000 hours in F-16s and 3,000 hours in A-4, Mirage III-C, and F-4 aircraft.[15] His engineering education, command experience, and work in aircraft and weapons development preceded the scientific and technical training he undertook for Columbia.[2][7]

The opportunity for an Israeli astronaut to join a NASA mission arose from a 1995 agreement between the United States and Israel.[10] Discussions that year involved U.S. president Bill Clinton and Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres.[14] NASA’s selection requirements included academic education in physics, engineering, or a related field, together with experience managing experiments.[10] The Israeli Air Force sought a candidate from its ranks, and Ramon was selected in 1997, with fighter navigator and test engineer Yitzhak Mayo as his backup.[10]

Ramon was asked in April 1997 whether he would become an astronaut and was selected as a payload specialist.[14] He began training at Johnson Space Center in Houston in July 1998, accompanied by Rona and their four children.[14] The assignment formed part of cooperation between the Israel Space Agency and NASA.[2] Mission delays extended his training, and by the end he had spent four and a half years preparing in Houston.[10][16]

Ramon and Mayo first completed a year of payload-specialist training and then received additional advanced mission-specialist training as the delays continued.[10] Mayo later withdrew as backup.[10] Ramon’s additional preparation equipped him to perform multiple crew tasks beyond his scientific assignment, although not to pilot, land, or control the spacecraft.[13] His assigned position aboard STS-107 remained that of payload specialist, with responsibility for scientific experiments.[7]

Columbia launched on January 16, 2003, at 17:39 Israel time, carrying Ramon and six other astronauts.[2][17] STS-107 was a multidisciplinary microgravity and Earth-science mission planned to last 16 days, with international investigations spanning biology, chemistry, physics, and climate research.[7][17] The crew worked in two teams and alternating shifts to keep experiments operating almost continuously.[2] The mission carried 32 payloads for 59 investigations, while the broader experimental program encompassed about 80 experiments.[18][2]

Ramon’s principal scientific assignment was the Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment, known as MEIDEX, designed at Tel Aviv University.[17] Its instrument package included ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared cameras intended to obtain calibrated images of desert dust and transported pollution aerosols over land and sea.[17] Ramon’s task included watching for dust clouds and pointing the experiment’s camera toward them.[7] The research sought to improve understanding of atmospheric aerosols and their effects on weather, climate, and rainfall, while supplying complementary information for NASA instruments.[17]

The scientific interest in dust extended beyond its visible presence in the atmosphere.[7] Dust can affect greenhouse gases, supply minerals to ocean life, and transport spores, bacteria, and viruses between continents.[7] MEIDEX was intended to help researchers understand how dust particles influence clouds and, through them, climate, with potential applications to climate models and forecasts of dust storms and rainfall.[19] NASA was also interested in the experiment’s capacity to help calibrate two American satellites.[19]

The observational schedule depended on conditions on Earth.[20] During the mission, planned observations of Middle Eastern dust storms had not yet taken place when suitable storms failed to occur in the region, where they were rare in winter.[20] Ramon remained prepared to carry out the observations if conditions became suitable, while the experiment’s wider program concerned dust storms over the Mediterranean and Atlantic and their effects on weather and climate.[20] MEIDEX also recorded sprites, electrical flashes occurring above storm clouds.[2]

Another Israeli experiment aboard Columbia, the Chemical Garden, had been prepared by students at Ort Kiryat Motzkin Middle School.[2] It compared crystal growth in space with growth on Earth.[2] Results from the Israeli experiments were broadcast in real time to research teams on the ground.[2] Ramon’s work aboard the shuttle included conducting experiments, observing ozone, downloading MEIDEX video, and participating in a press conference with the Israeli prime minister.[6]

Ramon’s diary recorded both the mission’s working routine and his adjustment to living in orbit.[6] He described waking in the mid-deck, moving to the laboratory, and carrying out the day’s scientific tasks.[6] In a message to Rona, he wrote that the four and a half years of waiting had suddenly seemed worthwhile, describing weightlessness, Earth’s thin atmosphere, and the company aboard as an extraordinary experience.[6] Another message from space expressed his response to the planet below: “The world looks marvelous from up here, so peaceful, so wonderful and so fragile.”[7]

Alongside his scientific responsibilities, Ramon regarded his presence aboard Columbia as representing Israel and the Jewish people.[3] Although he described himself as a secular Jew, he arranged for kosher meals and sought rabbinic guidance about observing Shabbat in orbit.[3] He was the first person to request kosher food for a space mission.[14] In consulting Chabad rabbi Zvi Konikov about the unusual circumstances of Jewish observance in space, he joked, “Jerusalem, we have a problem!”[3]

The shuttle’s roughly 90-minute orbital cycle raised the question of how to mark Shabbat when sunrise and sunset occurred repeatedly within an Earth day.[14] Ramon followed Cape Canaveral time for that purpose.[14] His diary included the words of the Friday-night Kiddush, which he had written down before reciting it in space.[21] His workload prevented him from holding a planned Shabbat gathering aboard the shuttle.[20] In a message to Israeli president Moshe Katsav, he wrote that he could see Jerusalem from space and had prayed the Shema while looking at the city.[22]

Ramon selected objects that he considered representative of Jewish history and the Jewish people.[11] These included a miniature Torah given to him by a Bergen-Belsen survivor, a book of Psalms, and a dollar given to him by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson.[14] He also carried wine for Kiddush, the last letter written by captured Israeli Air Force navigator Ron Arad, and a letter from his son Assaf.[11] Other items included mezuzot, a Bible, and a coin from the Jewish revolt against Rome.[8]

The miniature Torah had been used for a secret bar mitzvah in Bergen-Belsen.[4] It was distinct from the credit-card-size microfiche copy of the Bible that President Katsav gave Ramon for the flight.[15] Civic and institutional objects also accompanied him, including the president’s standard, a flag from Blich school in Ramat Gan, flags from Beersheba and Ramat Gan, and emblems associated with the Air Force, a military museum, and Tel Aviv University.[8]

For a Holocaust-related object, Ramon approached Yad Vashem, which supplied a replica of Petr Ginz’s Moon Landscape made to NASA specifications.[5] Ginz had created the drawing at age 14 while imprisoned in Theresienstadt and was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.[5] Ramon said that he felt his own journey fulfilled Ginz’s dream.[5] His explanation connected the flight directly to his family’s history: “I'm the son of a Holocaust survivor — I carry on the suffering of the Holocaust generation, and I'm kind of proof that despite all the horror they went through, we're going forward.”[3]

On February 1, 2003, Columbia disintegrated during reentry, killing Ramon and the other six crew members shortly before the scheduled landing.[2][15] Ramon was 48 and the oldest member of the crew.[23] His recorded time in space was 15 days, 22 hours, and 20 minutes.[12] The shuttle had apparently suffered damage to its heat shield; the accident led to the grounding of the shuttle fleet and an investigation that identified technical and organizational problems in NASA’s shuttle program.[2] Ramon’s remains were identified in Texas, and he was buried in Nahalal, Israel.[16][22]

Ramon’s handwritten Hebrew space diary survived Columbia’s destruction, although its pages were badly damaged, and was recovered in Texas.[6] Debris from the shuttle had been scattered across Texas and Louisiana.[21] The recovered diary pages were wet and stuck together, and their writing had blurred.[11] Their restoration required advanced technical methods and assistance from the Israel Police forensics department.[6]

NASA personnel initially believed the recovered pages were technical documents, but Rona recognized them as her husband’s personal diary.[6] The recovered material comprised 34 pages, including 12 blank pages and six containing his handwritten firsthand observations and reflections.[6] Conservators disinfected the pages, separated them under a microscope, photographed them with ordinary and infrared methods, and submitted them for forensic document analysis.[6] Restored material included the Kiddush prayer as well as technical and personal notes.[3]

The restoration and preservation work at the Israel Museum extended over four years.[24] Rona agreed to the diary’s public display there, describing its survival as “a small miracle that needs to be shared.”[3] After approximately 20 years at the museum, the diary moved in 2024 to the National Library of Israel on long-term loan from the Ramon family.[11] At the library it was digitally scanned and placed in a climate-controlled vault.[24]

The diary preserves the everyday experience of the mission as well as Ramon’s reflections on its meaning.[6] In one recovered passage, he wrote: “Today was the first day that I felt that I am truly living in space. I have become a man who lives and works in space.”[15] Its accounts of experiments, press conferences, floating through the shuttle, and looking at Earth sit alongside the religious text he prepared for Shabbat.[6][21]

Parts of the MEIDEX apparatus also survived the disaster and were recovered by NASA.[19] They included the camera Ramon used, its control system, lens housing, supports, recording drive, and other electronic components.[19] At Rona’s request, the recovered equipment was brought to Israel for public and educational display.[19] These surviving scientific instruments joined his written record as material remnants of the mission.[19][6]

Ramon received the United States Congressional Space Medal of Honor posthumously and was its only non-U.S.-citizen recipient.[14] President George W. Bush presented the honor posthumously to the Columbia crew on February 3, 2004.[3] Ramon’s other posthumous decorations included the NASA Space Flight Medal and the Israeli Chief of Staff Medal of Appreciation.[14] His U.S. honors also included the Distinguished Public Service Medal.[7]

Educational programs and space projects have continued Ramon’s legacy through government and other institutions in Israel.[2] Memorial institutions include the Ilan Ramon Youth Physics Center and the Ilan and Asaf Ramon Airport.[14] His flight became a major national event, and his death entered Israel’s collective memory as a national disaster.[2]

The family’s later history also became part of public remembrance of Ramon.[21] His eldest son, Assaf, was killed in a flying accident not long after graduating from Israeli Air Force training.[21] Rona established an education-supporting foundation and spoke publicly about coping with grief before her death from cancer at age 54.[21]

Ramon explained the national meaning of his journey through the histories of both his parents: his mother’s survival of Auschwitz and his father’s participation in Israel’s struggle for independence.[17] Before the flight, he described himself as a symbol of backgrounds shared by other Israelis and as evidence that the Jewish people’s struggles and aspirations were coming true.[17] His declaration that he represented “all Jews and all Israelis” expressed the broad responsibility he attached to becoming Israel’s first astronaut.[3]

Ramon’s participation in Operation Opera places part of his military career within a significant international dispute over Israel’s strike on Iraq’s nuclear reactor.[12] The June 1981 attack heavily damaged the reactor and was condemned by United Nations Security Council Resolution 487.[12]