It's been a five-year wait for one of the biggest sporting events on the planet as the Summer Olympics kicked off in Tokyo on Friday (July 23), with the world watching the international competition. But what about the sports fans not on the planet?
Astronauts onboard the International Space Station were able to watch the opening ceremony via a video feed on Friday and have been cheering on their respective countries.
The station is commanded by Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and is home to three American astronauts, two Russian cosmonauts and one French astronaut with the European Space Agency. And apparently, the crew is getting into the Olympic spirit with their own cosmic games.
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"The very first Space Olympics," French astronaut Thomas Pesquet wrote on Twitter Friday. "For crew cohesion, we put together a friendly competition between the #Soyuz team and the #CrewDragon team. With sports specific to space, mind you."
According to Pesquet, those space sports "ranged from synchronised floating or lack-of-floor routine to (very) long jumps and no-hand ball."
In this series of photos, you can see cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy holding Russia's national flag while watching the opening ceremony and other station astronauts getting in the Olympic spirit together under an array of national flags inside the station.
A Maxar Earth-observation satellite also captured a stunning view of Japan's National Stadium in Tokyo and its surrounding sports complexes, where many Olympic events are being held, as they appeared from orbit.
"Here on the ISS, 400 kilometers away from Earth, we are very much looking forward to watching the Olympic Games in Tokyo. So good luck to all the athletes and all the best from space. We'll be watching," French astronaut Thomas Pesquet said in a video shared on the official Olympics Instagram. Pesquet shared most of the crew's Olympic celebration photos on Twitter and Flickr.
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