Members of the station's 37th crew, Oleg Kutov and Sergey Ryazhensky, opened the Pierce airlock at 16:34 Israel time and floated out. Immediately afterwards, they took the photo with the torch turned off, which naturally cannot burn in the space chambers.
Today, two Russian cosmonauts in Russian spacesuits of the Orlan model carried out an 'out of this world' wave of the Olympic torch in a spacewalk that should end after midnight Israel time for maintenance work outside the International Space Station.
Members of the station's 37th crew, Oleg Kutov and Sergey Ryazhensky, opened the Pierce airlock at 16:34 Israel time and floated out. Immediately afterwards, they took the photo with the torch turned off, which naturally cannot burn in the space chambers.
As a symbol of international cooperation in sports competitions, the Olympic torch arrived at the station aboard the Soyuz spacecraft that carried the three new crew members (the 38th crew) to the space station: Mikhail Tyurin, Rick Masaracho and Kiuchi Wakata. On Sunday, the torch will return to Earth aboard the Soyuz spacecraft that will bring back three members of the 37th crew Fyodor Yurchikhin, Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano.
The same torch will be used to open the Winter Olympics on February 7 in the city of Sochi in southern Russia.
After finishing the photo-op with the torch outside the station, they returned it to the airlock and began the rest of their mission at an altitude of 400 kilometers above the Earth.
Among other things, they will install a workstation outside the station and operate the guidance platform that was installed during a previous spacewalk on August 22. In the first step, they moved the foot restraints used for space walks from the outside of the Zuzada component to the bottom of the workstation, and they also added handrails in the same position.
Their final mission will be to release a strap and remove brackets from the guidance platform in preparation for installing a high-resolution camera system during a spacewalk scheduled for December. Kutov and Ryzynski's last task tonight will be to shut down a scientific experiment system outside the station and then they will close the airlock and return to the station.
And in the meantime, Yurchikhin, Parmitano and Nyberg will enter the Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft for their return to Israel on Sunday. Mike Hopkins will remain at the station and will be limited to staying in the Foysk module and the Soyuz TMA-10M spacecraft. The other three - Masaracho, Vakata and Tiurin will have access to the rest of the station including the Zarya component where their Soyuz TMA-11M spacecraft is docked.
As I recall, for several days nine astronauts were in the space station at the same time, a record number since the cessation of space shuttle operations.
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For someone to kick Putin into space…..what a waste while Russians are starving ugh