On Saturday, two Russian cosmonauts will take it on a historic first spacewalk. The torch will not be lit.
It blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, crewed by three cosmonauts - Russia's Mikhail Tyurin, American Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata from Japan.
The Olympic symbol will be handed over to fellow cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky, who are already on the orbiting station, when they go on the spacewalk on Saturday.
"Our goal here is to make it look spectacular. We'd like to showcase our Olympic torch in space. We will try to do it in a beautiful manner. Millions of people will see it live on TV and they will see the station and see how we work," said O. Kotov.
The Olympic torch has been carried into space twice before - in 1996 and 2000 - but it has never left a spaceship. It will not be lit aboard the space station as this would consume oxygen and pose a risk to the crew. "Russia was the first country to send a man into space, and today we are making Olympic history by sending the Olympic Torch into space for the first time. This feat underlines incredible human capabilities and will symbolize the aspirations of all athletes from around the world to reach new heights in sports," said Dmitry Chernyshenko, president of the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee.
The Sochi torch will then be returned to Earth and used to light the Olympic cauldron in February next year.
