The National Library of Israel recently announced it has been entrusted with the space diary of Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut, who died in the Columbia space shuttle disaster in February 2003.

For the past 20 years, the diary has been kept at the Israel Museum, where it underwent a complex process of restoration, in cooperation with the Israel Police’s forensic department.

The library said the diary is on a long-term loan from the Ramon family, who helped to physically transfer the item to the Israel Museum.  

After initial processing, the diary was scanned by the National Library’s digital department, and is now stored inside a vault in the rare items repository, where humidity and temperature conditions are continuously monitored.

Chairman of the Board of the National Library of Israel Sallai Meridor said it was a privilege “to be entrusted with safeguarding and preserving this artifact, and to honor the memory of the man who wrote it.”

Head of the Conservation Laboratory at the National Library of Israel Marcela Szekely said the diary is “in good company here, in the same room as Isaac Newton and Maimonides, along with Ilan Ramon’s letter to Prof. Yeshayahu Leibovitz.”

The library may consider making the space diary part of its permanent exhibition.

Crash and discovery

Ramon was one of seven crew members killed when the Columbia spacecraft disintegrated upon re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere on February 1, 2003. 

Columbia had successfully completed 27 space missions before the disaster, with the crew performing 80 science and physics experiments before heading back to Earth.

However, the damage from the liftoff to the thermal protection system tiles on the orbiter’s left wing allowed hot atmospheric gasses to penetrate the heat shield and caused the orbiter to become unstable and break apart.

Ramon’s diary was recovered among the debris at the site of the Columbia STS-107 crash in Houston, Texas.

Experts believe the lightweight nature of paper allowed the notebook to go into a slow glide, leaving it relatively undamaged. Most of the damage likely occurred after the crash, as the shuttle fell in a humid, swampy area.

Ramon had apparently written at least one page before the liftoff on January 16, 2003. He wrote the rest of the pages during the 17-day science mission. 

In some entries, Ramon describes tasks, such as brushing his teeth in low-gravity, and conducting scientific experiments. Others express Ramon’s longing for his family.

There are also casual mentions of conversations he’d had with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and United States President George Bush, then the leaders of their respective countries.

Additionally, among the pages that were restored were the Friday night blessing over wine, with Ramon’s annotations.  

A hero for generations to come

Meridor called Ramon “a hero of Israel and the Jewish people for generations to come.”

Born in 1954 to Holocaust survivors, Ramon had an illustrious career as an Israeli Air Force pilot before enlisting to space missions. 

In 1997, he was selected as a payload specialist by NASA. In 1998, he began training for a space shuttle mission with a payload at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. He trained there until January 2003.

Ramon took a few personal items with him to the STS-107 mission, which is common among astronauts.

Among the items were: a tiny Torah scroll rescued from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; a copy of a drawing by Petr Ginz — a boy murdered at Auschwitz — titled “Moon Landscape”; and some wine for Shabbat.

He also took with him a letter from his son Asaf, one of Ramon’s four children. 

In a tragic turn of events, Asaf enlisted to the Israeli Air Force and died in 2009, at age 21, during a routine training flight, three months after graduating from flight school as the top cadet in his class. Ramon’s widow, Rona, passed away in 2018 after battling cancer.