A small chunk of Olympic National Park is orbiting Earth today aboard the space shuttle Columbia.
The Columbia lifted off Thursday morning from Kennedy Space Center, Fla., for a 16-day research mission — carrying the rock.
The launch was the most heavily guarded space launch in NASA history.
That’s because the flight included Israel’s first astronaut — Ilan Ramon, a colonel in the Israeli air force and a combat pilot.
Ramon is the son of a Holocaust survivor and has with him a drawing by a 14-year-old Jewish boy who perished at Auschwitz.
The Olympic rock is aboard the shuttle at the invitation of U.S. astronaut Willie McCool, pilot for the mission officially known as STS-107.
Last spring, McCool invited the Olympic National Park staff to send him a small memento that he could carry with him on the shuttle mission and later return to the park.
The staff selected a piece of pillow basalt to make the space flight.
————–
