Three astronauts return to Earth with the Russian Olympic torch

 

Three astronauts returned to Earth on Monday after a mission of 166 days, bringing the Russian Olympic torch made a historic spacewalk, three months games Sochi in southern Russia.

Iourtchikhine Russian Fyodor, Italian Luca Parmitano and American Karen Nyberg landed in the steppes of Kazakhstan at 2:49 GMT, as expected, with the Olympic torch, which was released about an hour in the area Saturday for the first time in history.

All three came down on earth on a Soyuz capsule suspended from a large white parachute to cushion the landing area Djezkazgan under a blue sky and a cold morning, according to images broadcast by Russian television.

The torch was packaged in a case that an employee of the Russian Space Agency (Roskosmos) was quick to open. “Here the torch,” said he launched before the cameras and photographers

He then handed the symbol of the Olympic Soyuz Commander, Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Iourtchikhine, smiling, just out of the capsule and immediately wrapped in a blue blanket to protect him from the cold, by -3 degrees Celsius. imitated the relay in Space few minutes later, the other two astronauts, Italian Luca Parmitano, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the American Karen Nyberg, NASA, were removed to turn the Soyuz teams ground came aboard several helicopters. The three astronauts transported on a special seat were installed side by side in front of a Russian flag and a flag of the Olympic Games in Sochi, which will take place from 7 to 23 February 2014 between the edges of the.

Black Sea and the Caucasus mountains of RussiaIn the course of their mission a little more than five months in space, they performed many scientific experiments, including research on antibacterial resistance.

“Space torch” – - one of 16,000 torch relay that began a month ago in Russia for the longest in Olympic history (65,000 km) journey to the Olympics – will be used to ignite the flame at the ceremony Opening February 7, 2014 in Sochi. Sprain traditions of the Olympics, the torch now in Kazakhstan remained off for the duration of space travel for security reasons.

many precautions “When the Olympic torch was in the space will be returned to Moscow, we will award the organizing committee and hope that the team just returned to Earth will participate in this event, “said an official of the Russian space program, Alexei Krasnov, quoted by Itar -Tass. Saturday, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky on a mission to the ISS in September, came out in space diving for about an hour with the torch. They imitated the relay of the Olympic flame is passing the torch to each other, posed for the cameras mounted outside the ISS, and are filmed and photographed.

These movements took long minutes; change of position in space requires many precautions. The Olympic torch had already been taken into space aboard a U.S.

shuttle to the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 and the Sydney Olympics in 2000, but he had never done output in the thermosphere.Besides space, the Olympic torch will also step into the depths of Lake Baikal (Siberia) and the summit of Mount Elbrus (Caucasus, 5633 m), having already traveled to the North Pole aboard an icebreaker propulsion nuclear , during a journey of 123 days began on October 7 in Moscow.The torch relay to be held Monday in Chukotka, a small republic in the extreme north-east Russia (6,200 km from Moscow), part of which lies north of the Arctic Circle, has been postponed to Tuesday due to a snow storm.

Three astronauts return to Earth with the Russian Olympic torch