As part of an advertising stunt, Russian cosmonaut, Mikhail Tyurin will be hitting a golf ball into space from the International Space Station.
Russian space agency, Roskosmos, has been paid a large sum of money by Canadian golf company, Element 21 for the stunt.
Flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin will film the golf commercial during a spacewalk on 22 November. He will hit a golfball into space from a tee mounted on a spring positioned on a ladder close to the hatch of Russian Pirs the international space station.
Once the ball has been hit into space, what will become of it? NASA and the Russian Space Agency have conflicting views.
NASA feel that the ball will stay in orbit for three days then it will burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere, without being a danger to other spacecrafts. Whereas Roskosmos think that the ball will remain in orbit for at least three years.
Kirk Shireman, NASA’s deputy ISS programme manager said, "I believe our data to be accurate. I suspect that there were some initial conditions or assumptions that were incorrect on that [Russian] analysis."
Tyurin was asked to hit the ball softly by NASA as it will fly thousands of kilometres per hour relative to Earth. It can be dangerous should it collide with something, irrespective of its weight .
An average golf ball weighs 45 grams but in space its weight will be three grams. The cosmonauts will take three balls with them to get the right hit.
There is so much debris floating around in space from old rockets and satellites to nuts and bolts. These items among others are a danger to NASA until they are burnt up in the atmosphere.
Nicholas Johnson, the chief scientist for NASA’s orbital debris programme said, "We are only going to be doing it in rare cases under very strict conditions, and doing it because of the safety of the crew and the station."
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