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In an official memorial ceremony yesterday at the Lod Air Force base near Ben-Gurion International Airport, friends, family, and Israeli political and military officials came to bid farewell to Israel's first astronaut, Col. Ilan Ramon, 48. Ramon, who lost his life when the space shuttle Columbia exploded upon re-entry into the earth's atmosphere on February 1, will be buried today in a private military ceremony in Nahalal. Ilan's widow Rona, their four children and Ilan's father Eliezer Wolferman, returned from Houston, Texas to attend the ceremony. Rona, and her eldest son Assaf, read an excerpt from an e-mail they received...

By JAMIE STENGLE Associated Press Writer February 10, 2003, 4:31 PM EST LUFKIN, Texas -- A Texas law enforcement officer was arrested Monday on federal charges he stole pieces of space shuttle Columbia. Harrison County Constable Robert Hagan II, 45, became the third person charged with looting shuttle debris that dropped onto the countryside. Hagan was charged with theft of government property for allegedly taking a piece of tile and other debris while helping with the recovery effort Feb. 1 and 2 in the Nacogdoches area. "It is a particularly troubling day when an individual who swore to uphold the...

Shuttle Testing Suggested Wings Were Vulnerable ASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — Studies conducted by NASA over the last four years concluded that damage to the brittle, heat-shedding material on the leading edge of the space shuttle Columbia's wings posed one of the highest risks of a catastrophic accident. The studies focused largely on the tremendous damage that could be caused in the unlikely event that a tiny meteoroid or other bit of orbital debris hit the leading edge of a wing, which is made of a lightweight material called reinforced carbon-carbon. That is still one of the theories about what might...

Corrosion suggested in shuttle crash   Weakened wing may have been vulnerable to impact of debrisBy James ObergSPECIAL TO MSNBC.COM        IN RECENT DAYS, NASA officials have expressed their frustrated bafflement over the observed debris impact on Columbia’s left wing. They have repeated studies made during the flight and still come up with results that show the worst-case damage is still far short of a mortal wound that could have prompted the catastrophic failure of the wing.        If the falling insulating foam were the triggering event, some additional factor or factors must have been present,...

<p>SAN AUGUSTINE, Texas — As Columbia was breaking up overhead, Johnny Ford was diving under pine trees trying to dodge debris plummeting into the dense forest where he was hunting.</p> <p>He suspected an airliner was crashing and worried aloud that the bodies of passengers soon would fall onto his hunting group as well.</p>

LANCASTER - Retired astronaut Gordon Fullerton will deliver the keynote address at an Antelope Valley memorial service today in honor of the seven astronauts who perished Feb. 1 when the space shuttle Columbia broke apart over Texas. Doors open at 12:30 p.m. The Air Force Band of the Golden West is scheduled to perform at 12:45, and the service begins at 1:30 at Lancaster Municipal Stadium, 45116 Valley Central Way.

LANCASTER - A Columbia High School may be in the future of the Antelope Valley Union High School District. However, which school should bear the honor to memorialize the seven astronauts who perished above the skies of Texas remains to be seen. The Antelope Valley Teachers Association called for the new William J. "Pete" Knight High School to be renamed Columbia High in honor of the shuttle craft whose 20-year-plus history was so dependent on Edwards Air Force Base Plant 42 in Palmdale and the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center.

<p>JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas (CNN) --NASA officials said Friday that they were examining photographs taken by an Air Force tracking camera shortly before the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated but were not yet convinced that they held the secrets to the final moments of the fatal flight.</p>

PALMDALE - They were witness to history and played an intimate part in the triumphant beginnings of the nation's efforts to explore the stars in a reusable space plane. History visited once again Feb. 1, this time with tragic results. While the entire nation mourns the loss of seven of its best and brightest in the tragic demise of the space shuttle Columbia, the loss carries another meaning for many in the Antelope Valley, birthplace of each of the orbiters and the landing site for many of their returns.

New York Times Week in Review From Excitement to Horror: Columbia's Last Flight Online By TOM KUNTZ The 1937 Hindenburg airship disaster was carried live to a large radio audience. The 1986 space shuttle disaster happened live on network television before millions of stunned viewers. Almost from the beginning, the 9/11 attacks were broadcast live worldwide. Last weekend's shuttle disaster also unfolded live, but the primary medium was arguably not radio or television. It was the Internet. A small audience of space enthusiasts learned of trouble in real time by tuning in to mission control in Houston via NASA...

A Star-Crossed Flight A week after the Columbia fell apart during its hurtling re-entry 39 miles up in the morning sky over Texas, the dots are not connecting for Ron Dittemore. "We are still looking for a missing link," says the 50-year-old shuttle program manager, who coordinates the initial convulsion of inquiry into the disaster. Hopes for a quick, sure explanation or even a well-rounded theory are proving as ephemeral as the multiple, spreading contrails and the thunderous roar that first mystified and then horrified witnesses on the ground. He has bits of evidence--fuzzy photos that may show damage to...

<p>The likelihood that the truth of what led to the disaster aboard space shuttle Columbia will fully be known has increased dramatically - now that NASA has come to its senses and admitted it cannot control the investigation.</p> <p>The space agency announced Thursday that it was ceding its ultimate authority over the investigation. It also agreed to a congressional demand that new members - with no ties to NASA - be named to the review board appointed just hours after the shuttle broke up, killing all seven astronauts aboard.</p>

<p>NASA officials said Friday they have asked experts in upper-atmosphere electric phenomena whether it is possible for such effects to occur at the altitude and weather conditions that the shuttle was flying through before it disintegrated.</p> <p>But they said that so far they have found nothing in their investigation to indicate that the shuttle encountered such phenomena on re-entry. "There is nothing in the data stream . . . that would cause any concern on our part," said Ron Dittemore, NASA's shuttle program manager.</p>

It took forever to glue on the thermal tiles that shielded the space shuttle from the scorching heat of reentry -- nearly two man-years of work for every flight -- and the glue dried so fast that technicians had to mix a new batch after every couple of tiles. But they came up with a solution: spit in the glue so it took longer to harden.

NASA Studied Microscopic Corrosion Studies performed by NASA (news - web sites) engineers during the 1990s raised the possibility that tiny pinholes on the space shuttle orbiters' wings could be enlarged by hot gasses during re-entry, but concluded that the problem was unlikely to endanger the spacecraft or their crews. Yet with increasing focus on the leading edge of Columbia's left wing in the days since the spacecraft broke up over Texas, interest in the pinholes may be renewed. NASA officials declined to say Thursday whether they considered pinholes a possible cause of the Columbia accident. Engineers who have studied...

Check out some of the experiments they were doing www.globalsecurity.org/space/library/report/2003/sts107-overview.pdf

Questions were raised yesterday about whether the foam that came off the shuttle Columbia's external fuel tank was a problem-plagued formulation that several years ago replaced the original insulating foam used on the shuttle fleet. NASA had sought a replacement because the original foam, called BX-250, contained a chemical, CFC-11, that was to be banned in 2001 because it harmed the ozone layer. The ban on chlorofluorocarbons, or CFC's, was required under an international treaty, the Montreal Protocol, and the Clean Air Act. Last night, some NASA officials and Republican Congressional staff members said that conservative and business groups were...

The Pilot - Joe H. Engle Whether commanding the Space Shuttle in orbit, flying the X-15 at Mach 5, pulling 9Gs in an F-16, or flying his own Piper L-4 "Cub", Joe H. Engle is completely at home in an airplane. Born in Abilene, Kansas, he attended the University of Kansas and graduated with a degree in Aeronautical Engineering in 1955. Commissioned through the Air Force ROTC program, Joe earned his pilot's wings in 1958, and was assigned to George AFB, CA flying North American F-100 Super Sabres. He graduated from the USAF Test Pilot School in 1961, and the...

That's CNN for you. They must have thought it was the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Is the San Francisco area part of the United States or has it joined France? After running a bunch of very far-left, America-hating and Bush-despising letters on Sunday and Monday commenting on the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, the San Francisco Chronicle's editorial page editor, John Diaz, acknowledged “the cynical, even hateful, tone of many of the letters.” But, he amazingly reported, “the outtakes were considerably harsher and more jaded than the selection we printed.”      Even “harsher”? Wow. The letters he ran included one which declared: “I fear that the illegitimate Bush administration will use this tragedy just as they...