Spacewalking crew installs new camera

? Two spacewalkers installed a camera on the outside of the international space station Monday and tossed overboard a surplus data-collecting device, sending it spinning off into the void like a spiraling football.

William McArthur Jr. and his Russian crewmate aboard the space station, Valery Tokarev, left the orbiting outpost unmanned during the nearly 5 1/2-hour spacewalk.

Normally, one crew member stays aboard while two others venture outside. But the space station crew has been reduced to two since the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, and it has been left empty nine times during spacewalks since then.

The new camera will help space station astronauts add new segments onto the orbiting station.

The device thrown overboard was once used to collect data on electrical activity around the space station. It was designed to work for only a few months and was no longer needed.