Published: 15 May, 2009, 12:01
Edited: 15 May, 2009, 12:01
A pair of spacewalking NASA astronauts has installed a new camera on the Hubble Telescope.
A stubborn bolt almost prevented them from removing the old camera, which had been in use for 16 years, but in the end John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel did the job as planned.
They have also replaced the defunct computer module handling scientific data collected by the telescope. Two more spacewalks are needed to finish the mission.
NASA calls this mission to overhaul the Hubble one of its riskier ones as the astronauts have to conduct all repairs in open space, and some of the operations were never meant to be done outside of Earth.
There have been a few causes for concern with the mission already, with scratches discovered on the shield of the Space Shuttle Atlantis following its takeoff on Sunday night.
NASA experts said the damage was insignificant, but another shuttle is on standby in case the astronauts run into any serious trouble.