Discovery DIY

In a shot from his helmet cam, astronaut Steve Robinson holds a piece of protruding gap filler he has removed from between the thermal tiles on the underside of Discovery, revealing the red adhesive that was used to hold it in position. Photograph: Nasa TV/Reuters

2.30pm update: In the end, he didn't need the homemade hacksaw. With just his fingers, astronaut-turned-repairman Steve Robinson has just performed an audacious in-flight fix to the space shuttle Discovery, allowing Nasa and the nation the chance to catch breath for the first time today, writes Richard Luscombe in Florida.

Stunning pictures from Robinson's "helmet-cam" broadcast live on the web and on Nasa's own TV station showed him pulling out the two protruding fragments of ceramic-cloth 'gap fillers' from Discovery's belly. "It looks like the patient is cured," he declared after the second rectangular strip came away easily with just a gentle tug.

Mission Control in Houston declared it "a great job" as Robinson, still dangling from the space station's robotic arm, headed back to the shuttle after an unprecedented spacewalk lasting more than four hours, but not before fellow space-walker Soichi Noguchi managed to snap a few pictures for the Robinson family album of a new national hero.

"You'll spend the next four years signing autographs," teased astronaut Andy Thomas, who choreographed Nasa's first in-orbit repair to a spacecraft. Despite the light mood, the relief aboard Discovery, and among the space agency's beleaguered engineers, is enormous as a potential danger to the shuttle's safe return to Earth is eliminated.