A research instrument by the Israel Space Agency and NASA to study to discover details about mineral dust transport through the air in the Mediterranean Sea and tropical Atlantic Ocean as viewed from the space shuttle. The experiment was performed in September 2003 during STS-107, the final mission of the space shuttle Columbia before it broke up during re-entry. Astronaut Ilan Ramon operated the research platform before he perished. Meidex was one of the experiments found but was badly damaged; much of the data Meidex collected, however, was radioed to Earth while Columbia was still in orbit. Among its observations, Meidex observed a dust storm that originated in the Sahara Desert, carrying dust over the Mediterranean Sea, and made observations of the lightning phenomena known as sprites, capturing the first two sprites ever seen from space.