The Space Olympics

The Olympics is always a fun event to watch. It is amazing to see all the hard work that athletes put in for four years finally pay off on the big stage. Medals are awarded and countries celebrate their athletes' accomplishments. But more importantly, the Olympics represents unity and world peace. The Tokyo Olympics demonstrated this perfectly. Even though the world has been battling with the COVID-19 Pandemic, we were able to have a great Olympic game. And while, at first, it didn’t feel like the Olympics, everyone got back into that Olympics mood, especially in that last week. One of the things that I was looking forward to the most was the closing ceremony and how they would hand off the torch to Paris, who would be hosting the 2024 Olympic Games. While watching the raising of France’s flag, they had musicians play the French national anthem. And they ended it with French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who is currently on the ISS. This got me thinking: do astronauts on the ISS celebrate the Olympics and how do they do it?

Thomas Pesquet Playing the French Anthem

The short answer is yes. Astronauts celebrate the Olympics. But the way they celebrate it is very interesting. One thing to remember is that being in the ISS essentially provides a zero-gravity environment. The astronauts used the zero-g environment to do weightless synchronized swimming, sharpshooting, and gymnastics. For sharpshooting, the astronauts used rubber bands and for swimming, they “swam” across the ISS and did synchronize “swimming”. They even created a game called “no-handball”, in which the crew had two goals with goalies and would move a ball into the goals by only blowing on it.

The crew of Expedition 65 also celebrated handing over the torch, with Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide giving an unlit torch (for obvious reasons) to French astronaut Thomas Pesquet. This isn’t the first time a torch has been brought into space to celebrate the Olympics. In 2013, Russian cosmonauts did a spacewalk and performed a ceremonial torch relay to celebrate the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Previous torches were flown on NASA Space Shuttles in 1996 and 2000. The Olympics represent unity and togetherness, similar to the partnership and unity that astronauts aboard the ISS have.

Crew Aboard the ISS Celebrating the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

Sources:

Howell, Elizabeth. “Watch Astronauts Hold Their Own Summer Olympics in Space WITH Zero-g Synchronized Swimming and More.” Space.com, Space, 10 Aug. 2021, www.space.com/astronauts-space-olympics-zero-gravity-sports-2021. 

Reardon, Logan. “French Astronaut PLAYS Saxophone from Outer Space during Closing Ceremony.” NBC10 Philadelphia, NBC 10 Philadelphia, 8 Aug. 2021, www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/sports/tokyo-summer-olympics/french-astronaut-plays-saxophone-from-outer-space-during-closing-ceremony/2919873/.