Friday, February 21, 2014

Meteor fragments in Olympic medals

In Soviet Russia, Space explore you!

Here’s a story that I alluded to in Ten more years of ISS and other space news.
That’s it for last week’s non-asteroid, non-Olympics space news.  Yes, that means there will be an entry that features both of those topics.  Stay tuned.
From Space.com: Winter Olympic Gold Medalists to Get Bonus Meteorite Medal Saturday.
What is better than winning gold at the Olympics? Winning gold at the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia on Saturday (Feb. 15) — because on that day, and that day alone, earning a gold medal also means being awarded a piece of a rock that fell from space.
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 Ten of those medals will be presented to those who place gold at the Sochi 2014 Olympics on the anniversary of the Chelyabinsk meteor fall.
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The medallions, which were crafted out of gold and silver, feature a design that was inspired by the footage of the meteor's fall as captured by car-mounted dash cams. The videos from that day quickly went viral, shared across the planet by social media.

The meteorite pieces are affixed in a small indentation at the center of the medals.

The meteorite medals are not replacing the Olympic gold medals awarded to athletes on Saturday, contrary to some media reports. The Chelyabinsk medals will be presented to the athletes separately and not as part of the traditional podium ceremony.

The 10 meteorite-embedded awards will be bestowed to the gold medal athletes competing in speedskating (men's 1500), short-track speedskating (women's 1000 and men's 1500), cross-country skiing (women's relay), ski jumping (men's K-125), Alpine skiing (women's super giant slalom) and skeleton (men's) events.
And that completes the observation of the first anniversary that I began with Russian meteor one year later--for now.

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