Russian cosmonaut slaps golf ball into orbit
By Erwin SebaThu Nov 23, 2:46 AM ET
Cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin smacked a golf ball into orbit off the International Space Station on Wednesday to raise money for the Russian space program during a spacewalk cut short by a balky spacesuit.
Tyurin, the station's flight engineer, made a one-armed swing with a gold-plated six-iron to send the lightweight ball on a journey estimated to take it around the Earth at least 48 times before it burns up in the atmosphere.
He spent 16 minutes setting up the shot off a ladder on a Russian docking module with the help of U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria and the guidance of Russian flight controllers.
"OK, there it goes," said Tyurin, who has played golf twice in his life. "It went pretty far. It was an excellent shot."
Canadian golf club maker Element 21 Golf Co. paid the cash-strapped Russian space agency an undisclosed amount of money for Tyurin's golf exhibition, which was filmed for a future commercial.
Fixing a malfunctioning cooling line in Tyurin's Russian-made spacesuit delayed him and Lopez-Alegria from leaving the space station airlock by an hour, using up part of the carbon dioxide absorption capability of their suits.
Russian flight controllers ordered the pair back into the station's airlock about an hour short of the six hours planned for the spacewalk.
The spacewalkers were never in danger as they still had reserves of carbon dioxide absorbing materials available.
After the orbital golf exhibition, Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria struggled for more than an hour in an unsuccessful attempt to retract an antenna on the Russian Progress supply ship that is docked with the station.
"We just cannot free it," Station Commander Lopez-Alegria told flight directors. "No way."
While not an immediate threat to the astronauts' safety or the station, the Progress is scheduled to leave the station in January and the supply ship or the station could be damaged by the antenna during undocking.
A future spacewalk will likely be made to retract the antenna as Russian experts further study the problem, a NASA spokesman said.
The pair successfully moved another antenna so it can communicate with the European Space Agency's automated supply vessel, scheduled to dock with the station in mid-2007.
The men also deployed an experiment that will study charged and neutral particles generated in low-Earth orbit by solar flares.
