After having distinguished himself as an IDF fighter pilot, Eytan Stibbe trained to be an astronaut, and is now preparing to take off tomorrow on the first-ever private mission to the international space station. Yonatan Meroz speaks with him about the experience:

Stibbe and three other astronauts will take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, which will be launched via the company’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle. On the menu are dozens of scientific experiments that will be carried out on behalf of a large number of organizations. (Stibbe is scheduled to carry out 35). The launch date is currently set for April 6, and Axiom Space, the American company behind the mission, together with the Israel Space Agency, the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Ramon Foundation, will be crossing their fingers that there won’t be any further delays.

The long shadow of the Columbia shuttle disaster, in which Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon along with six other crew members lost their lives, has hung over the mission throughout. Even the nineteen years that have passed since cannot dispel it.

“Ahead of the launch, I trained in the places that I visited with Ilan,” said Stibbe, who was a friend of Ramon’s and served alongside him for many years. “He took me around and showed me the shuttle and the simulators. It’s a very sentimental issue for me. I will take with me into space some of the pages of Ilan’s diary that survived the disaster, and a painting by his daughter Noa. I hope that the next two weeks change the sentiment in Israel that connects manned space flight and tragedy.”

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.