Mir cosmonauts on spacewalk repair mission

Two Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyov and Pavel Vinogradov have finished a successful space walk to repair an air leak on the Mir space station.

The cosmonauts found a faulty lock which was causing a loss of pressure.

They resealed the module and went on to recover American experiments installed on the outside of the space station last year.

The whole mission took three hours -- just half the time assigned for the operation.

The leaking hatch was the latest in a series of problems which have plagued Mir over the past twelve months.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service