The day after space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on reentry over a blue Texas sky in 2003, editorial cartoonist Mike Keefe from The Denver Post drew six stars and one Star of David on a black canvas, representing the seven astronauts lost in the disaster.

Today we add an eighth star, another Star of David, to that cartoon, in honor of Assaf Ramon. In our national narrative, Assaf was always going to be our second astronaut. And so we don’t just mourn the death of a young, promising pilot cadet, we mourn the sudden death of a national dream rekindled, of a promise unfulfilled. Continue reading →