Israel Astronaut Ilan Ramon Diary

Israel: Astronaut Ilan Ramon Diary Restored

By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency

Jerusalem----February 26......A small heap of paper that survived the fiery disintegration of 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 in Israel, 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 fit some of them together like jigsaw-puzzle pieces. Not everything could be deciphered. But Sharon Brown, the Israeli police document examiner who put the material together, said she was amazed that the metal-ring cardboard-bound notebook had even survived the Feb. 1, 2003, disaster.

"You know what a lit match could do to that pile of papers," she said this week at a convention in New Orleans of forensic scientists. This page and others from the flight diary of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon were restored by a forensics expert with the help of computer technology and infrared light. She would not disclose any personal observations by the astronaut, one of seven crewmen killed when the shuttle broke apart. But the pages included a list of topics Ramon planned to talk about during broadcasts from space, and the carefully copied text of the Sabbath kiddush, the blessing for wine.

Col. Ilan Ramon's Diary

All together, 18 pages handwritten in Hebrew were recovered: Four sheets held Ramon's diary during the flight; six were technical classroom notes made before launch; and eight were personal notes, also written before liftoff. The writing on some pages was washed out. Some sheets were tattered and torn, pocked with tiny irregular holes as if debris had ripped through them. Pieces were twisted into tightly crumpled wads smaller than a fingernail. Some pages were stuck tightly together.

Ramon, an Israel war hero, was his country's first astronaut. An Indian tracker found the papers two months after the shuttle disaster. Ramon's widow, Rona, asked Israeli police to find out what he had written. After 1½ years, Brown still has two pages of writing she has not been able to decipher. On one section where the writing had been washed out by rain, neither infrared nor ultraviolet light was any help. Brown took the pages to a colleague who scanned them into a computer and processed them with photo-editing software, using techniques to enhance contrast and separate the writing from the background. The diary, written in black ink and pencil, covers only the first six days of the 16-day mission.

"We don't know whether he just stopped writing, or ran out of paper, or other pages were destroyed," Brown said. Because the notebook was the personal property of Ramon's widow, Brown said she tried to put it together without reading it, as if it were a puzzle in a language she never had seen. "But very soon, I realized that was exactly the opposite of what I had to do," Brown said. She said she could not piece it together without understanding it.

While Ramon was the first Israeli astronaut, there have been six previous astronauts from Jewish households Judy Resnik, Jeff Hoffman, Ellen Baker, Jay Apt, David Wolf, and Scott Horowitz. All have doctorates; Baker and Wolf are physicians. Horowitz was the first Jew to command a space mission. Israel is the 29th country to have one of its citizens in space.

Col. Ramon sent the following e-mail message 24 hours before the tragedy from the Columbia to Israel Air Force Commander Dan Halutz: "It is a great privilege for me to be in the air force family for more than 30 years now and I am honored to represent all of you here in space, opening a new vision and way - air and space are one continuity and here we are - Space!"

Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke to Ramon shortly before he and his crewmates perished.
"I am very proud of the first Israeli astronaut. Congratulations to you and the whole crew,"Sharon said. "I wish you well and that you enjoy yourself and all return safely." President Moshe Katsav sent a microfiche of the Bible the size of a credit card to Ramon to carry on his journey, Beit Hanassi said Tuesday.

Ramon was a soft-spoken man conscious of the importance of symbols and history, and the role he plays in both.
"I have something else that is very meaningful,"Ramon replied, "something symbolic and exciting that I'll show you from space." "It's a great privilege to represent the State of Israel,"Ramon added. "It's a great honor for me." Ramon said earlier that he would take Jewish symbols or ritual objects with him that correspond to the timing of his particular mission. "I'm going to carry special things and try to express something about the unity of the Israeli people and the Jewish community. I have some ideas,"Ramon said, "but for the time being, I will keep them deep inside of me. It will be a surprise."

One of the items Ramon carryed into space was a pencil drawing entitled "Moon Landscape." Created by a 14-year-old boy named Peter Ginz, it shows how Earth might look if you were on the Moon and looking back at our home world. What makes the drawing so important to Ramon is that it was created while Ginz was in a Nazi concentration camp, before the boy died in 1944. Ramon, 48, was the son of Holocaust survivors. "I know my flight is very symbolic for the people of Israel, especially the survivors, the Holocaust survivors,"said Ramon. "Because I was born in Israel, many people will see this as a dream that is come true."

With AP