NASA / GETTY IMAGES
	Ilan Ramon trains for the Columbia mission last spring at the Johnson Space Center. A member of the Israeli Air Force, Ramon said being Israel’s first astronaut was “very emotional.”

The voice on the other end asked if he wanted to apply to be an astronaut. In Israel, the term astronaut often is used as an insult to describe those who are unstable or have their head in the clouds.

"I thought it was a joke," Ramon said.

It wasn't. The air force was looking for candidates to become Israel's first astronaut. Ramon had all of the necessary qualities: Gifted pilot. Team player. A technical background. A background conducting experiments in the air force. He was chosen after a short selection process.

Five years later, Ramon was returning yesterday from his first trip into space. Married with three sons and one daughter, the 48-year-old former combat pilot's flight has been front-page news throughout Israel.

"When I first started this, I didn't realize how big it was for Israelis and Jews," Ramon said. "I am a Holocaust survivor's son, an Israeli pilot and now, an astronaut. People can't believe it. It's very emotional for me also."

Ramon was born in a rural suburb of Tel Aviv in 1954 and grew up in the town of Beer Sheva in Israel's Negev Desert. When he was 16, a neighbor who worked with his father took Ramon for a ride in his small Cessna airplane. Ramon was given the controls. He was hooked.

"To this day," Ramon said, chuckling, "he thinks I owe him my career."

Like all Israeli youth, Ramon began compulsory military service after graduating from high school in 1972. He joined the Air Force. The Yom Kippur War broke out the next year when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel. Ramon took part, then graduated from flight school as a fighter pilot in 1974.

Ramon was chosen in 1980 to be part of the team that would establish the first F-16 squadron in Israel. Dov Cohen, now head of space systems at Israel Aircraft Industries, was an engineer who spent time in Utah with Ramon learning about the F-16's systems.

"After I got to fly backseat in the F-16, I realized the talents a fighter pilot needs to fly the airplane," Cohen said. "They have to be so precise, so multitalented, so disciplined. He had all of those qualities."

Ramon returned to Israel in 1981 as a deputy squadron commander. In June 1981, the squadron launched a controversial attack to destroy an Iraqi nuclear facility under construction near Baghdad.

A year later in June 1982, Ramon took part in Israel's bombing and invasion of neighboring Lebanon, an effort by the Israeli military to root out Palestinian guerrillas there.

The combat veteran left the air force in 1983, at age 29, to earn an electrical and computer-engineering degree from Tel Aviv University. While attending the university, Ramon met his future wife, Rona, at a neighbor's party; he married her after a six-month courtship. He graduated in 1987 and returned to the air force.

For the next decade, Ramon worked his way up the chain of command — F-16 squadron commander, head of the aircraft branch of the operations department, head of weapons development and acquisition — until the phone call came. He began astronaut training at Johnson Space Center in July 1998.

— Michael Cabbage, The Orlando Sentinel