Two spacewalking astronauts have started to repair the Hubble telescope 350 miles above Earth.

John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel left the shuttle Atlantis wearing bulky spacesuits to protect them from the debris that is in orbit as they carried out a project to upgrade and repair the 19-year-old observatory.

The instruments will enable Hubble to capture images from as early as 500 million years after the birth of the universe.

Over the course of five spacewalks, the astronauts will replace a 1990s-era digital camera with an upgraded imager that is sensitive to infrared and ultraviolet light in addition to the visible wavelengths that the human eye can detect.

Before the Atlantis launch, Mr Grunsfeld said: "This new camera promises to see further back in time, closer to the Big Bang, than we've ever been able to see before."

The astronauts are also scheduled to replace a key computer that processes and formats information collected by science instruments for transmission to the ground.

The computer shut down last September, just a few weeks before the Hubble servicing mission had been scheduled to fly. Nasa delayed the mission so engineers could prepare a spare. Telescope operators switched to a backup system in the meantime.

Nasa plans to leave Hubble with as much spare equipment as possible in hopes of keeping it operational until at least 2014, by which time a replacement should be ready.

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