Lightness of Being
The bright sun dissects the airglow above Earth’s horizon in this view photographed with a digital still camera from the Space Shuttle Columbia during the STS-107 mission.Space Shuttle Columbia and the STS-107 crew perished during re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003.
Israeli forensic expert solves mystery of Ilan Ramon’s diary
“Once we started to examine the papers, we saw that they could split into three categories. On eight pages, you could see the writing clearly, it hadn’t been washed out. The pages were curled up and tattered, and it was like working on a jigsaw puzzle putting the fragments back into place. Just to know where to orient the fragments, I had to try every single permutation and combination. It took a few weeks to put the puzzle of those eight pages back together,” said Brown.Once completed, Brown photographed the pages and sent them to Rona Ramon who was back in Houston at the time.
One of the pages contained the handwritten Sabbath prayer of the wine – the kiddush – which Ramon had written out in order to be the first Jew to recite the blessing in space. Brown said that because of her religious background, she was able to piece together the scattered letters that remain on the page.
“When I speak about the diary to a non-religious audience and I say ‘I found this word, this word, and this word – what could this document be?’ They usually don’t know, but when I ask the question to a religious audience, they answer right away – ‘it’s the Kiddush.’
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
