Sochi Olympic torch arrives at space station
2014奥运火炬抵达空间站

Russian rocket with Olympic torch docks on to the International Space Station on Thursday. The torch will remain in space for five days. For safety reasons, it will not burn when it's onboard the space outpost.

The crew of ISS Expedition 38 carried the torch through the hatch joining their Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS, after successfully docking earlier in the day.

First through the hatch carrying the torch was Commander Mikhail Tyurin of the Russian Federal Space Agency, followed by Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA and then Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata from Japan.

The ISS crew will carry the unlit torch around the station's numerous modules before taking it out on a spacewalk on Saturday.

For safety reasons, the torch will not burn when it's onboard ISS. Lighting it would consume precious oxygen and pose a threat to the crew. The Olympic torch has flown into space once before , in 1996 aboard the US space shuttle Atlantis for the Atlanta Summer Olympics, but will be taken outside the spacecraft for the first time in history.