As the Columbia space shuttle prepares to ascend into space some time tomorrow afternoon (Israel time), Air Force Col. Ilan Ramon is making his own last-minute preparations to be the first Israeli astronaut. Columbia will circle the Earth for 16 days to provide weightlessness for a slew of scientific experiments. Arutz-7's Ariel Kahane asked Prof. Pinchas Alpert, of the Geophysics Department of Tel Aviv University, what Ramon's scientific duties will be aboard the space launch.

"Ramon's main purpose," Prof. Alpert said, "will be to investigate the properties of particles in the atmosphere, called aerosols. In our region, there are particles from various sources, such as the desert... He will be looking through special cameras developed here at Tel Aviv University at the particles, in order to study their physical and chemical properties. At the same time, a plane crew, headed by myself, will be traveling through the same dust layer that he will be looking at, and we will be giving him the calculations of where the dust storms will be, their height, area, size, and other properties…" Asked what is the advantage of studying the layers from space, Prof. Alpert said, "Our plane can only see a tiny part of the dust layer, whereas from a spaceship circling the earth in 90 minutes, data can be gathered from the entire Earth, giving us important knowledge about one of the main problems facing the planet at present in many industrialized countries - namely, the greenhouse effect and the heating of the Earth."

Ramon has other, secondary missions as well, Alpert said, including studying "visibility in the atmosphere, which has important military ramifications; the reflection of sunrays from the ocean; and also the phenomenon of sprites - very short light bursts that occur high up in the atmosphere, which he will try to photograph in order to help us figure out what they are."