Shuttle astronauts complete first of three spacewalks

Work done during the spacewalks will extend the life of the space station

Two astronauts from the space shuttle Atlantis have completed the first spacewalk of their mission.

Michael Foreman and Robert Satcher managed to install a spare antenna on the International Space Station (ISS) inside the first two hours.

This was one of three spacewalks planned during the shuttle's 11-day visit, which began with a smooth docking on Wednesday.

Atlantis blasted off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on Monday.

Already several tons of pumps, tanks and other equipment have been unloaded into the space station.

Holiday in orbit

The equipment and associated spacewalks are expected to extend the lifespan of the ISS beyond next year's planned retirement of the shuttle fleet.

NASA said that during Thursday's spacewalk, the two astronauts finished their scheduled jobs with two hours to spare.

They were then assigned a task planned for the second spacewalk - deploying a system for attaching payloads, after overcoming some initial difficulties.

The six all-male crew of Atlantis will spend the US Thanksgiving holiday in orbit.

They will return to Earth with a seventh crew member, Nicole Stott, who has been living at the space station for nearly three months.

But this will be the last such shuttle crew rotation before the fleet's retirement.