Shuttle astronauts began the first of five spacewalks slated for this fourth and final servicing mission on the Hubble Space Telescope at 8:52 a.m. Eastern time Thursday. They installed a new wide-field camera and swapped out a data router that began malfunctioning in September of last year. Two astronauts are shown above approaching Hubble on NASA TV.

But no matter what the astronauts are doing, any Shuttle crew’s extravehicular activities are awe-inspiring and mesmerizing. In this Wired Science mini-gallery, we trace the history of the spacewalk with photos from NASA.

































Images: All courtesy of NASA. First image screengrabbed by @bethbeck.

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