St. Luke of Crimea icon heading to Intl. Space Station

Moscow, March 16 (Interfax) - Bishop Savva of Voskresensk consecrated an icon of St. Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky), Archbishop of Crimea that will be delivered to the International Space Station.

The hierarch said at the ceremony that the icon will go to the orbit and "fly around our Earth blessing our whole Universe where we are existing," press service of the Moscow City Diocese reports.

The transportation of the holy image to the Space Station will become possible thanks to the Roskosmos executive director on manned space programs astronaut Sergey Krikalyov who flew around the Earth over a thousand times with miraculous icon of the Valaam Icon of the Mother of God onboard Soyuz TMA-6 in 2005.

The icon was painted by students of the icon workshop of the Moscow State Regional University. After returning from space it will be kept in St. Nicholas Church in the Novospassky Monastery in Moscow.