NASA astronauts on the International Space Station will not have to miss 2014 olympic game coverage while they are in space Space.com reported Thursday.
"We've got the Japanese astronaut [Kiochi Wakata], we've got three Russian astronauts [Oleg Kotov, Sergey Ryazanskiy and Mikhail Tyurin] and then you have Mike [Hopkins] and I from the United States," Rick Mastracchio, a NASA astronaut told Space.com. "I think there will be some friendly competition especially if the Russian and U.S. hockey teams meet head to head. That would be interesting," Mastracchio told Space.com.
Mastracchio and Hopkins are going to coordinate with the station's mission control center to transmit certain sports and events they and other astronauts favor Space.com reported.
Some coverage will be on a delay, while others might be available live. It will give the astronauts something to do during their spare time especially on weekend days Space.com reported.
"When you're up here for such a long time, even though we do have a variety of food, it starts to get a little bit old, so anytime you can get something a little bit different, it's definitely a treat," Mastracchio told Space.com. "So, I'm sure the Russians have a lot of good food and there are a lot of things that we have that they enjoy also," Mastracchio told Space.com.
"We don't have much snow up here," Mastracchio told Space.com. "The kind of thing we do up here is more like gymnastics when we're floating around and spinning around, you feel like a gymnast or how a gymnast must feel when they're doing those incredible feats," Mastracchio told Space.com.
"I like a lot of the events in the Winter Olympics," Mastracchio told Space.com. "The speed skating, and some of the different skiing events are pretty interesting to me. Anything where there's a lot of speed seems a little more interesting."
