The joy of the closing of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics reached into space, via astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS).
The official Olympic account on Twitter posted a video of the handover of Akihiki Hoshide, an astronaut from Japan, who symbolically handed over the Olympic flag to Thomas Pesquet, an astronaut from France.
After Tokyo, the next Olympics will be held in France in 2024. After the handover, there is an interesting scene that ends the video, where Hoshide and Pesquet both ‘fly’ out of the video frame and let the Olympic flag fly.
Hoshide is the Commander of the ISS who has been an astronaut since 1999. This is Hoshide’s 3rd trip into space. Although Pesquet was an Aviation Engineer on the ISS, he had previously also been a pilot for Air France, where he flew an Airbus A320S.
Olympic handover… in space #ClosingCeremony @thom_astro @astro_kimbrough @novitskiy_iss @Astro_Sabot @Aki_Hoshide @Astro_Megan @roscosmos @nasa @Space_Station @esa @JAXA_enpic.twitter.com / 0EJPZdww
- Olympics (@Olympics) August 8, 2021
The 2020 Olympics will be held in Tokyo, Japan, and their closing ceremony is underway.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are also listed as the most -crowded digital Olympics in history.
As reported by Nikkei Asia, as seen on Thursday (8/8/2021), viewership for the opening broadcast of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics is down 36% compared to the Rio 2016 Olympics.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) actually found interesting data that there is a change in the way people around the world watch the Olympics.
The IOC says Olympic websites and applications have exceeded 50 million since opening. This is a 2 -fold increase from the Rio 2016 Olympics. Olympic -related social media activity generated 2 billion posts in the first week.
TikTok’s video on the Olympics reached 1.4 billion views. The Instagram olympiad increased 12 times and added millions of followers.
“There is a strong bond with the youth of the world,” said Olympic Broadcasting Service CEO Yiannis Exarchos.
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