Olympic torch will be part of spacewalk
Print Edition
A Russian rocket soared into the cosmos yesterday carrying the Sochi Olympic torch and three astronauts to the International Space Station ahead of the first-ever spacewalk for the symbol of peace.
Video streamed by the US space agency NASA reported a flawless docking with the space station about six hours after the craft blasted off from Russia’s manned space facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
The unlit torch for the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian city of Sochi is to be taken on a spacewalk tomorrow, then return to Earth on Monday with three departing space station astronauts.
The arriving crew members were Russia’s Mikhail Tyurin, American Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata of Japan.
Once the newcomers enter the space station following a long hatch-opening process, the orbiting lab will have nine people aboard for the first time since 2009.
Fyodor Yurchikhin of Russia, NASA’s Karen Nyberg and Italian Luca Parmitano are the crew scheduled to return to Earth with the torch via a Monday landing on the steppes of Kazakhstan.
The Olympic torch will not burn onboard the space outpost because lighting it would consume precious oxygen and pose a threat to the crew.
The crew will carry the unlit torch around the station’s numerous modules before taking it out on a spacewalk.
The Olympic torch was taken aboard the US space shuttle Atlantis in 1996 for the Atlanta Summer Olympics, but this is the first it time it will be taken outside a spacecraft.
“It’s a great pleasure and responsibility getting to work with this symbol of peace,” Tyurin said yesterday before the launch.
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