Three ISS crew members have safely returned back to Earth carrying the Olympic symbol after making history with the first ever torch handover in open space.
The
Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft has successfully landed in the steps of
Kazakhstan in Central Asia. The three crew members – NASA astronaut
Karen Nyberg, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano and Russian cosmonaut
Fyodor Yurchikhin – spent five and a half months in orbit.
On
Saturday, Russian cosmonauts for the first time in human history took
the Olympic torch on a spacewalk. The “cosmic” torch will be the one to
light the Olympic flame in Sochi. Although
the torch was carried into space on two prior occasions – for the 1996
Atlanta games and Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000 – up until now it has
not been taken on a spacewalk.
The
open space stage of the torch relay lasted an hour out of the
six-hour-long mission of the Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey
Ryazansky. While
in space the torch was not burning as open flame is not permitted on
the ISS. The torch will be relit upon its return on Earth, and will
eventually light the main flame of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics on
February 7.
The torch was delivered
to the ISS on Thursday by Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, NASA
astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata. The
reinforcements will remain on the ISS with NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins
and cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy.
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