 Ramon was the space shuttle payload specialist on board the fatal STS-107 mission of Space Shuttle Columbia, in which he and the six other crew members were killed in a re-entry accident over southern Texas.Ramon had been selected as a Payload Specialist in 1997 and trained at the Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, from 1998 until 2003, for a mission with a payload that included a multispectral camera for recording desert aerosol (dust).The Ilan Ramon annual International Space Conference is a living tribute to Israel's first astronaut, the late Colonel Ilan Ramon.