Israeli astronaut’s diary

‘Launch. No, I couldn’t believe it. Until the moment the engine(s) were ignited, I still doubted it. In the last few days of our isolation in the Cape, since the fateful discussion [on] Sunday afternoon - in those days we all already felt that [this was] real, and yet - we didn’t believe it.’ This is from the space diary of Ilan Ramon, an Israeli fighter pilot and later the first Israeli astronaut. Tragically, he lost his life with six other crew members when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry into earth’s atmosphere. Astonishingly, though, 37 pages of a diary he kept during the mission were found at the Texas crash site. Now, more than 20 years later, these pages have been transferred to Israel’s national library in Jerusalem.  

Ramon was born in Ramat Gan, Israel, in June 1954, his father having fled Germany in 1935, and his Polish mother having survived Auschwitz. He joined the Israeli Air Force (IAF) in 1972 and graduated as a fighter pilot in 1974. He quickly rose through the ranks. He participated in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and took part in Operation Opera (the 1981 strike against Iraq’s Osiraq nuclear reactor). He took time off from the military in the mid-1980s to study for a degree in electronics and computer engineering at Tel Aviv University. There he met Rona Bar Simantov, and they married in 1983. They had four children, but his oldest son Assaf died shortly after graduating from IAF flight school.

Within the IAF, Ramon served as a deputy squadron commander and later as a squadron commander. On being promoted to colonel in 1994, he became head of the Department of Operational Requirement for Weapon Development and Acquisition. In 1997, he was selected to become Israel’s first astronaut. He trained with NASA at the Johnson Space Center for five years becoming a payload specialist on the Space Shuttle Columbia mission STS-107. The 16 day science and research flight ended in tragedy when, on 1 February 2003, the shuttle disintegrated, re-entering earth’s atmosphere. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, becoming the only non-US citizen to receive this honour. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the Ramon Foundation, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

During the ill-fated mission, Ramon kept a diary, making notes and comments in Hebrew. Astonishingly some of the pages of this diary survived the explosion, and were among 84,000 other fragments found in East Texas. The complex process of restoration and preservation was carried out at the Israel Museum, assisted by the Israel Police’s forensic department. Earlier this year, the diary was finally transferred to the National Library of Israel. The event garnered much publicity - see The Times of Israel, The Guardian, NBC News. Here are two widely quoted extracts from the recovered diary.

‘Launch. No, I couldn’t believe it. Until the moment the engine(s) were ignited, I still doubted it. In the last few days of our isolation in the Cape, since the fateful discussion [on] Sunday afternoon - in those days we all already felt that [this was] real, and yet - we didn’t believe it.’

‘Travel diary, day six. Today was perhaps the first day that I truly felt like I was really ‘living’ in space! I’ve turned into a man who lives and works in space. Like in the movies. We get up in the morning with some light levitation and we roll into the ‘family room’. Brush my teeth, wash my face, and then go to work. A little coffee. Some snacks on the way, off to the lab . . . a press conference with the Prime Minister, and then immediately back to work, observing the ozone layer.’

Extracts from Ramon’s earlier personal diary and that of his son were published in Above Us Only Sky - The Diaries of Ilan and Asaf Ramon by Merav Halperin (Gefen, 2021). And brief excerpts from both can be found at Our Soldiers.