Sochi Winter Olympics torch to go to space in November

Overall view of ceremony celebrating the one-year countdown to the opening of the games at Bolshoy Ice Dome. Sochi

Moscow, Sep 6 (IANS) In a historic first, an unlit Olympic torch for the Sochi Winter Games will be taken to space on a spacewalk in November, a Russian cosmonaut said Friday.

The torch will go to the International Space Station Nov 7 and taken out on a spacewalk two days later before returning to the Earth, reports Xinhua.

“The flame won’t be burning in space, we’ll just carry the torch into space,” said Oleg Kotov, one of the two cosmonauts who will be involved in the torch’s run in the outer space.

He said the cosmonauts “have already ordered broadcast of certain sports and we’ll be watching them on the station”.

After the Olympic flame arrives in Russia from Greece in October, it will spiral out from the capital before heading east and looping around the Kamchatka peninsula, down to Vladivostok and back across southern Siberia via Lake Baikal, the world’s largest freshwater lake.

On its way through more than 2,900 towns in Russia’s 83 regions, the torch will make its way back into Russia, eventually settling down at the Black Sea resort of Sochi for the opening ceremony Feb 7, 2014.