On November 09, 2013 two Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy took an Olympic torch on a spacewalk for the first time in history as part of the Sochi 2014 torch relay.
The spacewalk began at 14:34 UTC when the cosmonauts opened the hatch of the Russian "Pirs” module of the International Space Station.
The torch, unlit for safety reasons, was taken out from the capsule of the International Space Station (ISS) at around 14:50 UTC by the spacewalkers.
The torch will stay at the orbital station for another two days. It is due to be brought back to Earth by Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, U.S. astronaut Karen Nyberg and Italian Luca Parmitano, of the European Space Agency, who will depart the ISS on board the Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft on November 11.
According to Russian officials, the "space" torch will be used to lit the main Olympic flame during the opening ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics on February 07, 2014. The 22nd Winter Olympic Games, the first time to be held in Russia, are slated for Feb. 7-23 in the North Caucasus city of Sochi.
The spacewalk lasted 5 hours and 50 minutes.
This was the second space flight for an Olympic torch. The shuttle Atlantis carried a torch aloft in 1996 before the Summer Games in Atlanta, but it was not taken outside.