spacetoday.net: ISS crew performs spacewalk, golf shot

Posted: Thu, Nov 23, 2006, 10:10 AM ET (1510 GMT)
ISS golf shot attempt (NASA)

Two members of the crew of the International Space Station performed a spacewalk outside the station Wednesday evening, highlighted by a much-publicized "golf shot" into orbit. Astronaut Mike Lopez-Alegria and cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin spent five hours and 38 minutes outside the station Wednesday starting at 7:17 pm EST (0017 GMT Thursday). The first major task of the EVA, and the one that garnered all the attention leading up to the EVA, was a golf shot by Tyurin, where he hit a lightweight golf ball using a gold-plated club provided by a Canadian company. The swing, which sliced the ball to the right, was filmed for later commercial use under an agreement between Canadian company E21 Golf and Roskosmos. Later in the spacewalk Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin tried to move an antenna on a docked Progress spacecraft into the retracted position, but could not get it to budge. The two also repositioned other communications antennas on the Zvezda module and installed an experiment on the exterior of the module.