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Jewish Astronauts: American Garrett Reisman and Israeli Ilan Ramon

(Jerusalem Post) Laura Kelly - U.S. astronaut Garrett Reisman spent over 100 days in space on the shuttles Endeavor, Discovery and Atlantis, with three space walks that totaled 21 hours and 21 minutes. While in training, Reisman became close friends with Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut. Ramon invited Reisman to his family's Passover Seder in Houston. On Feb. 1, 2003, after a successful 16-day mission in space, all seven members of the crew of the Columbia space-shuttle including Ramon were killed when the spacecraft disintegrated upon reentry. "Everybody designates another astronaut to take care of your family if something bad happens, and Ilan had designated a good friend of ours, a Canadian astronaut named Steve MacLean, to help out," Reisman said. "But I knew that this was going to be a much bigger job than any one person can do....I spent about a year and a half doing nothing - my whole job was to just help [Ilan's wife] Rona and the kids. NASA was great to let me do that....It's kind of a lifelong thing."
2016-03-01 00:00:00
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