ISRAEL: Counting down from 10 to zero, the families of the space shuttle Columbia's crew waited in an "odd, terrible quiet" for a landing that never came, the wife of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon said.
In her first public comments since Saturday's disaster, Ms Rona Ramon told Israeli reporters in Houston that her husband had been so confident of the mission's success that he had not drawn up a will.
She recalled, in the remarks published yesterday, how the families of the seven crew members stood on the landing strip of the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida looking toward the skies for the shuttle to appear.
"Just like at the lift-off, we counted back from 10, but we got to zero and nothing. No sign - the shuttle wasn't drawing near, nor did we hear the sonic booms that we knew would be heard before the landing," she said.
"There was an odd, terrible quiet. As the minutes passed we already knew that there was nobody to wait for and nothing to wait for," she said. She said her husband had sent the family e-mails moments before the shuttle prepared for landing.
Ramon (48), the son of a Holocaust survivor, was the youngest pilot to take part in the 1981 Israeli raid on an Iraqi nuclear plant.