JERUSALEM (AP) — Pages from
an Israeli astronaut's diary that survived the explosion of the space shuttle
Columbia and a 37-mile fall to earth are going on display this weekend for the
first time in Jerusalem.
The diary belonged to Ilan
Ramon, Israel's first astronaut and one of seven
crew members killed when Columbia
disintegrated upon re-entering the atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003. Part of the
restored diary will be displayed at the Israel Museum beginning Sunday.
A little over two months
after the shuttle explosion, NASA searchers found 37 pages from Ramon's diary,
wet and crumpled, in a field just outside the U.S. town of Palestine, Texas.
The diary survived extreme heat in the explosion, extreme atmospheric cold, and
then "was attacked by microorganisms and insects" in the field where
it fell, said museum curator Yigal Zalmona.
"It's almost a miracle
that it survived — it's incredible," Zalmona said. There is "no
rational explanation" for how it was recovered when most of the shuttle
was not, he said.
NASA officials did not
immediately respond to requests for comment.
The U.S. space agency
returned the diary to Ramon's wife, Rona, who brought it to forensics experts
at the Israel Museum and from the Israeli police. The diary took about a year
to restore, Zalmona said, and it took police scientists about four more years
to decipher the pages. About 80 percent of the text has been deciphered, and
the rest remains unreadable, he said.
Two pages will be
displayed. One contains notes written by Ramon, and the other is a copy of the
Kiddush prayer, a blessing over wine that Jews recite on the Sabbath. Zalmona
said Ramon
copied the prayer into his diary so he could recite it on the space shuttle
and have the blessing broadcast to Earth.
Most of the pages contain
personal information which Ramon's wife did not wish to make public, he said.
"We agreed to do the
restoration completely respecting the family's privacy and the sensitivity
about how intimate the document is," museum director James Snyder said.
The diary provides no
indication Ramon knew anything about potential problems on the shuttle.
Columbia's wing was gashed by a chunk of fuel tank foam insulation at liftoff
and broke up in flames just 16 minutes before it was scheduled to land at the
Kennedy Space Center in Florida. All
seven astronauts on board were killed.
The diary is being
displayed as part of a larger exhibit of famous documents from Israel's
history, held to mark the country's 60th anniversary this year. Also on display
will be Israel's 1948 declaration of independence, the 1994 peace treaty with
Jordan and a bloodstained sheet of paper with lyrics to a peace anthem that was
carried by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at the time of his assassination in
1995.
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