Two Russian cosmonauts took the torch for the Sochi Winter Olympics on a spacewalk on Saturday.
Live footage showed Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky waving an unlit version torch outside the International Space Station 420km above Earth.
A three-man crew took the torch up to the space station on a Russian Soyuz rocket on Thursday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The two cosmonauts took pictures and videos of each other holding the torch using helmet cameras.
The torch, which was tethered to their spacesuits, was to spend up to six hours in open space.
The Olympic torch has been carried into space twice before - in 1996 and 2000 - but never left the spaceship. It is not being lit aboard the space station as this would consume oxygen and pose a risk to the crew.
The BBC reports the Sochi torch will be returned to Earth on Monday and used to light the Olympic cauldron in February.
