Ilan (Wolferman) Ramon (1954 - 2003)

Born 20 Jun 1954 in Ramat Gan, Tel Aviv, Israel

Died 1 Feb 2003 at age 48 in Over Texas, United States

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Awards and Honors

Congressional Space Medal of Honor [1][2]

Biography

Ilan (Wolferman) Ramon is Notable.

Ilan Ramon (born Ilan Wolferman; June 20, 1954 – February 1, 2003) was an Israeli fighter pilot and later the first Israeli astronaut for NASA.

Ilan Wolferman (in Hebrew: אילן וולפרמן) was born to parents Eliezer Wolferman and Tova "Tonya" Kreppel in Ramat Gan, Israel on 20 June 1954. His parents both were affected by the Holocaust and had survived. His father was born in Germany and fled with his family in 1935 due to the rising tide of persecution. His mother and his maternal grandmother were both born in Poland and were captured during World War II and imprisoned within Auschwitz, where they both survived. They relocated to Israel in 1949. Ilan changed his last name to Ramon, as it was expected of Israeli Air Force recruits to adopt a more Israeli sounding last name when they were chosen for this role.

Ramon flew on Columbia STS-107 with Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, William McCool and Rick Husband. The mission lasted 16 days and was primarily a scientific mission. Ilan was a Payload Specialist aboard Columbia and as such provided his technical expertise on any number of the 80 experiments done by the crew. At the end of the mission, tragedy struck as the shuttle's exterior insulation had been compromised, and the shuttle disintegrated under the intense heat of reentry. All aboard were killed.

Ilan's remains were found and returned to Israel, where he was buried.

STS-107

Obituary

Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, knew he was carrying the hopes of an entire people into space.

The 48-year-old Israeli air force colonel carried a microfiche of the Bible given him by his country's president, a tiny Torah scroll given to a Holocaust survivor at a Nazi concentration camp and a small pencil drawing titled "Moon Landscape" by a boy killed at the Auschwitz camp.

Ramon, the son of a Holocaust survivor, was not particularly religious but decided to eat kosher food in orbit, saying before the flight that he wanted "to respect all kinds of Jews all over the world."

He also took a silver-and-copper mezuzah into space with a star of David ringed with bits of barbed wire, the kind used in Nazi concentration camps.

"Ilan wanted a symbol of the Holocaust to carry with him into space," said Aimee Golant, the artist who crafted the mezuzah, which traditionally graces the door of a Jewish home.

NASA selected Ramon in 1997 to be a payload specialist. Along with his wife and their four children, he had been living in Texas for several years as he prepared for the flight.

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.

His presence on the shuttle following 28 months of fighting between Israel and Palestinians, led to increased security surrounding the flight.

But it also was a source of pride in a nation worn by the grinding conflict. Israeli newspapers featured him on the front page, and Israel television broadcast the Jan. 16 liftoff live.

Ronit Federman, a friend of Ramon's since high school, took comfort from e-mails he sent from space.

"He wrote about the divine happiness of looking at Earth," she told Israel's Channel 10 television. "He wrote that he would like to keep floating for the rest of his life. That was the last sentence he wrote to us."^[3]

Sources

1. ↑ Congressional Space Medal of Honor Recipients
2. ↑ First non-US citizen recipient
3. ↑ Obituary

See also:

• Wikipedia: Ilan Ramon
• Wikidata: Item Q219569, en:Wikipedia
• Find A Grave: Memorial #7135431
• Ancestry Profile