Eytan Stibbe, a former fighter pilot, will soon become the second astronaut in Israel's history, the country's Space Agency announced Monday, in a special televised statement from the President's Residence in Jerusalem.
Stibbe is slated to take off for the International Space Station in late 2021 for a mission of just over a week. He is scheduled to spend 200 hours in space where he will perform a number of experiments using Israeli technology and scientific developments.
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He will begin training for the mission early next year, and in the three months prior to takeoff he will undergo training in the US, Germany, and Russia, the Israel Space Agency said.
Israel's first astronaut Ilan Ramon, who was part of the 2003 STS-107 mission of Space Shuttle Columbia, was killed along with six other crew members when the Columbia disintegrated as it re-entered the atmosphere, just 16 minutes before it was due to land back on Earth.
Ramon's son, Tal, took part in the press conference at the President's Residence where Stibbe's space mission was announced.
"As a child, on dark nights, I use to look up to the sky and wonder what's there beyond what I could see," Stibbe said in a statement. "It takes great courage for us to be able to free ourselves from that which ties us down, to leave gravity," he said.
"This is a day of national joy, and great pride," President Reuven Rivlin said. "An Israeli pilot with a blue-and-white flag embroidered on his shoulder will prove once again, as we have been showing here for 72 years, that even the sky is no limit for us.
"This mission to space, for science and research, on behalf of humanity's neverending search for knowledge, for discovery, for understanding, is being launched at a time when humanity faces one of its greatest challenges. It is a crisis the likes of which our generation has not known. Because of the coronavirus, we have come to realize how many great concepts – like science, medicine and research – can fundamentally shake our lives.
"We have come to realize how much we do not know, not only about distant planets and infinitely huge galaxies but even here on our own small planet," the president continued. "Dealing with this microscopic, tiny virus, in an effort to find a vaccine, we must work together, scientists from different countries and peoples. That is the power of science. It reminds us that we are part of something much bigger, that speaks to the human spirit that is within us all."
Rivlin lauded Stibbe as "Israel's representative in the human effort to understand the miraculous mechanism that enables life on this globe, and to crack the secrets of the universe. Go in peace, and return in peace," he concluded.
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