I think they used the equivalent of the Hubble Telescope.
From John Glenn's Mercury mission to orbit the earth, to Neil Armstrong’s first historic steps on the moon, to the unprecedented spacewalks required to repair the Hubble telescope, these epic stories are shown in stunning clarity and told by the astronauts and engineers who were there.
The space shuttle only really makes headlines where there has been a disaster ... Routine shuttle launchings don't make headlines. What actually makes the newspaper headlines are the marvellous pictures from the Hubble telescope and those of the surface of Mars and Jupiter and Titan, all obtained robotically.