Astronauts stage spacewalk in ship gash scare

TWO astronauts began a spacewalk yesterday to replace equipment on the international space station as NASA experts calculated whether the shuttle Endeavour’s crew would need to repair a gouge on the ship’s belly.

A chunk of insulating foam hit the Endeavour at lift-off last week in an unlucky ricochet off the fuel tank.

The unevenly shaped gouge - which straddles two side-by-side thermal tiles and the corner of a third - penetrates all the way through the thermal shielding on the ship’s underside.