The First Olympic Torch To Be In Space Has Returned Back Home

The Olympic games themselves may not be that interesting to some, however for the first time ever the Olympic torch has been to space!

Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazansky have taken the Olympics’ main symbol into space outside the station, handing it to one another in an imitation of a more down-to-earth torch relay.

“Prior to that, the cosmonauts will attach a holder, carrying a hermetically sealed box with a camera, to the surface of the space craft. The rest of the ISS crew will also film their colleagues,” a representative of Russia’s Mission Control told RIA Novosti.
The photo shoot with the Olympic torch lasted an hour out of the six-hour-long mission of the Russian ISS crew members in space, during which they also dismantled and mounted several items of the station’s equipment. They also checked the ISS’s surface for possible damage done by micro meteorites.

While in space the torch was not alight as flames are not permitted on the ISS. It arrived on the International Space Station on a Soyuz spacecraft, November 7. The torch will be relit with gas once it returns to Earth on November 11, and will eventually light the main flame of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics on February 7.

The torch has now safely returned back to earth.

Expedition 37 Lands, Brings Olympic Torch Back to Earth

NASA Flight Engineer Karen Nyberg, left, Expedition 37 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of Roscosmos, center holding the Olympic torch, and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Luca Parmitano sit in chairs outside the Soyuz capsule just minutes after they landed in a remote area outside the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on Monday, Nov. 11, 2013. The Olympic torch was launched with the crew of Expedition 38 to the International Space Station on November 7. It was passed from one module to the next and had its first spacewalk on November 9 with two Russian cosmonauts as part of its international relay. Now back on earth it will continue its journey to Sochi, Russia for the 2014 Winter Games. Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano returned from five and a half months onboard the International Space Station. Credit NASA/Carla Cioffi