Russia to send Olympic torch to space trip
Torch is now scheduled to blast off for ISS on November 7 and return back to Earth on Nov 11.
MOSCOW (AFP) - When Russia first floated the idea of sending the Olympic flame to the International Space Station (ISS) ahead of next year s Winter Games in Sochi, most people treated it as a joke.
It was February 2011, three years before the launch of the sporting extravaganza, when a top-ranking official in Russia s space agency suggested featuring the ISS in the traditional torch relay ceremony.
Sending the Olympic flame to space "is not a bad idea", said Vitaly Davydov, who served as deputy head of the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) at the time. "It is theoretically possible."
It turned out that Davydov was just a bit too optimistic -- although not entirely off the mark.
More senior Russian officials eventually decided that bringing an open flame on board a Soyuz rocket filled with tonnes of explosive fuel was not a wise idea.
Besides, internationally-agreed rules governing the ISS forbid fires from being lit on board the orbiting lab, for obvious safety reasons.
So Russia came up with a Plan B: sending the Olympic torch to space without the flame, which would remain rooted to the ground in a special capsule resembling a small oil lamp.
But, to create that bit of drama, the torch would then be taken out for a space walk -- something that would look stunning on television and draw attention to Russia s mastery of both space and sport.
The torch is now scheduled to blast off for the ISS on November 7 and return back to Earth on November 11.
The honour of taking the torch outside the station on November 9 will fall on Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky, who went up to the station together with NASA s Michael Hopkins on September 26.
"I will climb out first with a video camera in my hand and other photo equipment," Ryazansky told reporters before blast-off.
"Then Oleg will climb out with the torch, and I will be the one taping it. Then we will switch -- if he lets me hold the torch," Ryazansky joked.
