When the first Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, died in the Columbia spacecraft disaster, his whole country mourned. He had been the pride of Israel. In Columbia — The Tragic Loss, interviews with NASA officials and Ramon’s family offer both expert analysis of the flight and a personal look at the tragedy that shook the Jewish nation.

“Disappointed. Pissed off,” Ramon’s son beats at a punching bag while he explains his reaction to NASA’s failure in bringing the astronauts home safely. “He was 100% sure NASA would take care of everything.” Some experts say everyone did the best they could, while others blame NASA’s ineffective bureaucracy for not taking the space shuttle’s damage more seriously.

At Columbia’s launch, Ramon’s family cheered from the bleachers and wept with excitement. For the sixteen days that the space shuttle circled the Earth, he corresponded with his family through emails and video conferences. Ramon’s wife recalls that their connection despite their unprecedented separation inspired new emotions between them that was, “like falling in love again.” And it’s clear that for the children too, extreme distance made them more aware than ever of the love they felt for their father.

But, sadly, their excitement and re-ignited love for Ramon only made his surprising death more painful. At one point, Ramon’s elementary school age son, who was particularly close to his father, shares one of the emails he sent to the shuttle: “All my friends want your autograph,” the little boy slowly reads while sitting on the couch in his living room, “It’s cool having a dad…” He can’t finish the sentence. He takes in short breaths to hold back his tears, while his mother’s soft touch consoles him.

It’s now clear that when the Columbia launched, a suitcase-sized piece of cooling foam broke off from the spacecraft, severely damaging the left wing. While it’s normal for popcorn-sized foam to fly off during the launch, such a massive piece put a hole in the wing that was large enough for a small child to fit inside of it. This hole allowed the heat generated by reentering the Earth’s atmosphere to break apart the spacecraft, killing everyone aboard. Columbia shares the experience of Israel’s national hero in outer space and investigates how NASA’s faulty communication allowed for the disaster that widowed Ramon’s wife and left his children brokenhearted.

Columbia offers interviews with both NASA officials in charge of the mission and critics of NASA, who were all devastated by the disaster and are attempting to understand what went wrong. What’s most frustrating is that NASA had videotapes of the takeoff that suggested the damage was serious, but no one investigated it fully. There seems to have been a breakdown of communication between the managers of the mission and the NASA engineers who knew enough to be concerned for the Columbia’s safety. Had they addressed the threat the hole presented, the astronauts lives might have been saved. One critic of NASA points to the fact that the astronauts had the tools on board the spacecraft that were necessary fix the hole, had they only known about it.

The film offers viewers a rare opportunity to glimpse what it’s like to leave the Earth. Through videotapes of their mission and Ramon’s own words, the documentary hints at what it might feel like to be detached from everything that is familiar and float in infinite space, looking down at mankind.

Unprepared for his death, Ramon did not leave his wife a last will and testament, which left her feeling lost in planning his funeral. All she knew was that while he was in space he loved listening to John Lennon’s “Imagine,” which she played at the ceremony. “Imagine there’s no countries…nothing to kill or die for. Imagine all the people, living life in peace,” Lennon sings to a smooth melody. For an Israeli, who came from a land were peace was so precarious, these words were particularly poignant. From space Ramon saw a quiet, milky-cloud covered Earth where countries are borderless, man is united, and an end to violence seems possible.