The excitement surrounding the start of the 2024 Summer Olympics extends into space.
The six POT Astronauts currently living on board International Space Station (ISS) organized its own mini-Olympics to mark the start of the games, which are being held in Paris and other locations in France.
Let's take a look at the astronauts' joyful efforts in a two-minute video, which NASA released today (July 26).
The action begins with the passing of an Olympic torch (a simulation, of course, since fires are strictly prohibited on the ISS) from Jeanette Epps to Mike Barratt, to Suni Williams, to Tracy Caldwell Dyson, and finally to Butch Wilmore, who is in the station's passenger seat. Domewith the Earth visible in the background.
The astronauts prepare for their activities. Epps and Williams, for example, stretch their arms. Wilmore stretches his upper body and then hydrates himself by inhaling a globule of water floating near his head.
Related: Weightlessness and its effect on astronauts
And then the orbital games begin. Barratt tosses a makeshift discus, and Wilmore does a shot put with a ball of duct tape. Williams and Matthew Dominick (NASA's sixth astronaut living off Earth at the moment) do some gymnastics, and Epps runs down a corridor of the International Space Station. Caldwell Dyson does some weightlifting, lifting a barbell that Wilmore and Barratt hold off the “floor.”
It's all in good fun, of course. But the astronauts ended up sending a heartfelt message to the athletes of the 23rd Olympiad.
“Over the last few days on the International Space Station, we've had a blast pretending to be Olympic athletes,” Dominick says at the end of the video, joined by the other five NASA astronauts.
“We, of course, have had the benefits of weightlessness“We can't imagine how difficult it must be to be a world-class athlete and to play sports in real gravity. So, from all of us on board the International Space Station to each of the athletes at the Olympic Games, good luck!”
The six NASA astronauts aren't the only people living on the ISS right now; it's also home to Russian cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenken and Oleg Kononenko, who commands the orbiting laboratory's current Expedition 71 mission.
All of these astronauts are serving the typical six-month stay on the ISS, except for Williams and Wilmore, who arrived aboard the new Boeing. Star line The Starliner capsule is set to launch on June 6 for a week-long stay. But Starliner's time in orbit has been extended several times as engineers investigate problems with thrusters and helium leaks on the spacecraft. NASA and Boeing have No release date has been set yet. for Starliner.
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