The Olympic Torch in Space
The most remote stop on the road to Sochi
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Considering Russia’s size, it’s no surprise that the Olympic Torch relay for this year’s winter games in Sochi has covered a lot of territory. Cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy even carried the torch—unlit, of course—outside with them on a spacewalk last November, a stunt that got them a lot of attention, even though the video released at the time was fairly low quality (see below for high-def scenes).
For Kotov, who’s currently on his third tour aboard the International Space Station, it was a kind of culmination. He had been on the station back in 2007 when Sochi was chosen for the 2014 games, and in the years since, cosmonauts (as well as Earth-imaging satellites) have made a point to photo-document the Olympic site’s transformation from a Black Sea resort to a village for athletes.
This Russian-language TV report produced by the Roscosmos space agency also shows scenes from a mini-relay staged by Russian, European, and US astronauts inside the station last fall, plus a few glimpses of another celebrity torchbearer—Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space.