The International Space Station over Eath ... tee-off is planned for early Thursday morning.
Credit: NASA
CAPE CANAVERAL: Space junk is set to pile up in Earth's orbit as NASA decides to relax its littering rules.
After years of debate on how to dispose of rubbish from the International Space Station, the U.S. space agency will allow crew to send certain items of excess or broken equipment into orbit, according to a report in London's Daily Telegraph newspaper.
"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," Nicholas Johnson, the chief scientist for NASA's orbital debris program told the Telegraph.
Thousands of pieces of rubbish are already in orbit around Earth, including old rockets, satellites, nuts, bolts and exhausted instruments. NASA's decision comes as a Russian cosmonaut, Mikhail Tyurin, prepares to add a golf ball to orbiting debris.
In an advertising stunt by a golf club manufacturer, Tyurin will hit a drive from the top of the Russian docking port on the International Space Station (ISS). The golf shot is planned for a spacewalk early on Thursday morning, Sydney time.
"Of course the crew is taking this very, very seriously so they've been doing a lot of practice," said NASA flight director Holly Ridings. Federal law prohibits the U.S. space agency from receiving any money for its involvement, while the Russian space agency has been paid an undisclosed amount.
NASA delayed the tee-off for months while safety experts pored over possible flight paths for the ball, to make sure it would not return to the station. If it were to hit, the force would be equivalent to an 18-tonne truck traveling at 160 kilometres per hour, according to experts.
"Our safety community has done a lot of work to understand and get ready for this task," Ridings said. "There is absolutely no re-contact issue with the space station."
Station commander Michael Lopez-Alegria, who is accompanying Tyurin during the spacewalk, will help set up a camera to film the shot for an upcoming television commercial.
Tyurin's drive is expected to be one for the record books, though not everyone agrees on how far the ball will fly. NASA figures it will fall into Earth's atmosphere and be incinerated within three days. The golf club manufacturer is betting on three years.
During the Apollo 14 moon mission in 1971, U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard hit a golf ball with a six-iron from the lunar surface and boasted that it traveled "miles and miles" in the low-gravity atmosphere.
Other items left in space include a glove lost by U.S. astronaut Edward White in 1965, and a putty knife lost by British astronaut Piers Sellers in July this year.
NASA officials say that certain objects aboard the space station - such as a worn-out ammonia tank - cannot be carried safely back to Earth.
Most discarded objects will burn up in the atmosphere, but until they do they will be added to the list of items NASA tracks to ensure they do not hit the space station - some 13,000 pieces of junk and growing.
