JERUSALEM – Disintegrating pages of a diary that an Israeli astronaut wrote during the doomed Columbia space shuttle mission were miraculously found in Texas, it was disclosed yesterday.
Ilan Ramon, an Israeli air force combat pilot, recorded his thoughts about the mission, starting from takeoff, in the handwritten journal.
But no one knew of its existence until a Native American scouring Texas fields for debris after the shuttle crash spotted the charred first page.
Neither the Native American, nor NASA officials, knew what the pages meant until they were shown to Ramon’s wife, Rona, who had remained in Houston after the Feb. 1 tragedy.
She immediately identified them as the handwriting, in Hebrew, of her husband.
“The existence of the diary was a stunning surprise,” said Naftali Gliksberg, who directed a documentary about the diary that will be aired in Israel on Tuesday, in advance of the first anniversary of the tragedy.
Only the first of the eight diary pages was legible, he told The Post. The others had been apparently bleached white during the shuttle’s plunge and 1,800-degree heat.
But Rona Ramon took them to the Israeli police department, which used optical scanners and, with the help of museum experts who decipher ancient manuscripts, they were able to reconstruct the pages.
The diary, titled “A Diary, Ilan Ramon, Astronaut,” covers the first six days of the 10-day mission and begins with his emotional reaction to the takeoff:
“No, no, I never believed it [would happen]. Until the ignition of the engine, I still doubted . . .”
Gliksberg told The Post:
“What is also remarkable is the way he wrote about his sentiments about his family, his wife and their four children. He mentioned each of them. He wanted to record how he felt about them in space.”
Along with the diary was a ninth page on which Ramon had written a Sabbath prayer so he could recite it properly in space.
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FIRST-PERSON ACCOUNT
Pages from the personal diary of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, who was among the victims of the Columbia disaster, were found in Texas yesterday.
The portions of Ramon’s diary that survived Columbia’s plunge had to endure forces that disintegrated the vehicle as it reentered earth’s atmosphere
* Extreme overheating, with temperatures of more than 1,800 degrees.
* Columbia was traveling 13,200 mph – about 18 times the speed of sound – when it began to break up over Texas.
* NASA lost all data contact with Columbia when it was at a height of 207,135 feet.