Fore! ISS crew to shag a golf ball
A Russian cosmonaut and his U.S counterpart won't worry about someone playing through when they tee up a golf ball at the International Space Station.
As part of a 6-hour space walk scheduled for Wednesday, ISS Expedition 14 flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin will drive a golf ball into space in a twosome with Cmdr. Michael Lopez-Alegria, Space.com said Friday.
Tyurin will hit one to three golf balls away from the space station one-handed as part of a promotion by a Canadian golf club manufacturer.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials said they estimate the golf balls will de-orbit in two to three days, depending on atmospheric conditions.
"It poses absolutely no concern for the upcoming shuttle launch," spacewalk flight director Holly Ridings. The space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to launch next month.
A major task scheduled for the spacewalk is installing hardware designed to measure charged and neutral particles in low Earth orbit, Space.com said. Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria also are to reposition a navigation antenna that will help the automated docking of a European cargo ship and assess whether an antenna used in a recent docking fully retracted.
Copyright 2006 by United Press International
