Torch to go on space walk

A crew of three took the Olympic torch to the International Space Station on a Russian rocket yesterday, ready to send it on its first space walk in a showcase for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi.

A camera on board showed Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata pumping the air with his fist as the Soyuz rocket, painted with snowflake patterns, lifted off from the Russian-rented Baikonur launch facility on the Kazakh steppe.

After a six-hour trip to the station, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin crawled through a hatch and handed the unlit torch to his beaming countryman on board, Fyodor Yurchikhin.

"It was great ride and we're happy to be here," said US astronaut Rick Mastracchio- who travelled with Tyurin and Wakata - in a video link with relatives and space officials 400km below on Earth.

Inspired by the Firebird of Russian folklore, the metre-long, red-and-silver torch weighs almost 2kg on Earth, but it floated lazily in zero gravity as Tyurin twirled it in the weightlessness of the orbital outpost.

"It's just an outstanding day and a spectacular launch," William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said.

By tradition, a good-luck charm usually hangs above Soyuz crews when they lift off. Wakata, Tyurin and Mastracchio sat beneath a stuffed polar bear in a blue scarf, a mascot of the first Olympics Russia will host since the Soviet era.

The space flight is part of what will be the longest torch relay before a Winter Olympics, which President Vladimir Putin hopes will burnish Russia's international image.

"This is a way to show the world what Russia is made of," Dmitry Kozak, the deputy prime minister Putin put in charge of planning the Olympics, said. "We need to put our country, its might and its economic achievements, on display."

For safety reasons, the torch will not be lit. Tomorrow, cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky will take it outside the station for a space walk. Engineers have equipped it with a tether to keep it from floating out of the cosmonauts' grip.

The Olympic torch has gone on voyages aboard spacecraft twice before, in 1996 and 2000, but it has never been taken into open space.