Aluf Mishne Ilan Ramon served in the Israeli Air Force. Ilan served with the Israeli Air Force. Ilan was 48 years old.
He flew in the war of 1973 and was the youngest pilot on the raid that destroyed the Osirak reactor in 1981 - the eighth aircraft, the one with the least fuel to get home. He took a degree in electronics and computer engineering at Tel Aviv University and commanded a squadron.
He was not observant, but said that as the first Israeli in space he would represent all Jews and all Israelis, and so he ate kosher aboard and asked a rabbi how to keep the Sabbath at sixteen sunrises a day.
He carried with him a small pencil drawing called Moon Landscape - the Earth as it would look from the Moon - made by Petr Ginz, a boy of fourteen in Theresienstadt who was murdered at Auschwitz. He also carried a miniature Torah scroll that had been used at a secret bar mitzvah in Bergen-Belsen, and a dollar from the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
His diary survived the break-up and a fall of thirty-seven miles, and was restored over a year by the Israeli police forensic laboratory.
He is buried at Nahalal. His eldest son Assaf, a pilot of the Israeli Air Force, was killed in a training accident six years later and is buried beside him.
Foreign awards
NASA Distinguished Service Medal posthumous
Conferred by Congress
Congressional Space Medal of Honor posthumous
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