Russian’s take the Olympic Torch for a spacewalk

The Olympic Torch takes a spacewalk.
The Olympic Torch takes a spacewalk.

A pair of Russian cosmonauts took an Olympic torch into open space for the first time in history on Saturday as part of the torch relay of the Sochi 2014 Winter Games.

Gripping the unlit silver-and-red torch in the gloved fist of his spacesuit, Oleg Kotov crawled through a hatch and stepped outside the International Space Station some 200 miles above Earth, where he waved it triumphantly.

He handed the torch to Sergei Ryazansky and they took turns posing with it, with the station, the blackness of outer space and the blue-and-white orb of Earth as backdrops.

“That’s a beautiful view,” Ryazansky said.

The footage, most taken from cameras mounted on the cosmonauts’ spacesuit helmets, was broadcast live on U.S. space agency NASA’s Internet channel and Russian state television.

A three-man Russian, American and Japanese crew carried the torch up on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur cosmodrome on Thursday, bringing the number of crew aboard the station to nine for the first time without a U.S. shuttle parked at the outpost.

The spacewalk is a showcase for the Sochi Games in February, the first Olympics that Russia will hold since the Soviet era and a crucial event for President Vladimir Putin, who has been in power for nearly 14 years.

Inspired by the Firebird of Russian folklore, the meter-long torch weighs almost 2 kg (4.4 lbs) on Earth.

Special tethers were attached to prevent it from floating away in the weightlessness of outer space.

It will be returned to Earth on Monday by Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, U.S. astronaut Karen Nyberg and Italian Luca Parmitano and handed off to Sochi officials. It will be used to light the Olympic flame when the Games start of February 7.

Russia is conducting the longest torch relay before any Winter Olympics, a 65,000-km (40,000-mile) trek that has taken the flame to the North Pole on an atomic-powered icebreaker and will bring it to Europe’s highest peak, Mt. Elbrus.

“This is a way to show the world what Russia is made of,” Dmitry Kozak, the deputy prime minister Putin put in charge of planning the Olympics, said after the Baikonur launch.

Olympic torches have gone aboard spacecraft before, for the 1996 and 2000 Games, but never in open space.

Quotes in this story came from Reuters.

 

Jim Williams is the Washington Bureau Chief, Digital Director as well as the Director of Special Projects for Genesis Communications. He is starting his third year as part of the team. This is Williams 40th year in the media business, and in that time he has served in a number of capacities. He is a seven time Emmy Award winning television producer, director, writer and executive. He has developed four regional sports networks, directed over 2,000 live sporting events including basketball, football, baseball hockey, soccer and even polo to name a few sports. Major events include three Olympic Games, two World Cups, two World Series, six NBA Playoffs, four Stanley Cup Playoffs, four NCAA Men’s National Basketball Championship Tournaments (March Madness), two Super Bowl and over a dozen college bowl games. On the entertainment side Williams was involved s and directed over 500 concerts for Showtime, Pay Per View and MTV Networks.