Monday, February 10, 2025

These Astronauts Went Hard In The Space Olympics [Videos]

Astronauts from the International Space Station competed in their own version of the Olympics.

[imagesource: Twitter /  Thomas Pesquet]

The Olympics has officially ended, and Tokyo sure did provide some truly exceptional moments, like the race many are calling the greatest in Olympic history, and our own Tatjana Schoenmaker breaking the world record en route to gold in the women’s 200m breaststroke.

But while those Olympic moments played out in front of the cameras for the world to see, there was another, completely different Olympics happening all the way up in space.

Thankfully, this space race has nothing to do with Bezos, Branson, and Musk, but rather seven athletes among the astronauts living in the International Space Station.

Nerdist set up a series of videos depicting the Space Olympics, originally shared by Thomas Pesquet, a French astronaut from the European Space Agency:

Upside down is right, as the competitors not only had to contend with each other, but they were also working against zero-gravity.

The first “discipline” was called the “Lack-of-floor routine” and entailed an astronaut completing a difficult manoeuvre without ever touching the floor.

Which side of the spacecraft is considered the floor?

Next up was a game of “No-handball” in which competitors had to use their breath to move a ball into the goals:

Far better than Bezos’ ping pong space antics.

Then the teams moved on to the third game, “Synchronised space swimming”.

This is a truly heartwarming “show [of] teamwork and crew cohesion”:

The Space Olympics ended off with a game of “weightless sharpshooting” which included hitting a target in zero-gravity:

It is worth noting how touching it is to see astronauts from different countries come together in zero-gravity to celebrate each other and the world.

To mark the end of the Space Olympics, Akihiko Hoshide from Japan passed the Olympic flag to France’s Thomas Pesquet:

Next up, Paris 2024, and perhaps, another Space Olympics.

[source:nerdist]