Golf stunt drives space advertising to new lengths

MOSCOW: When Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov uses a gold-plated six-iron to drive a golf ball into orbit from the International Space Station (ISS) this summer, he will stretch the bounds of what does and doesn’t go on the orbiter. 

Pitched as a tribute to Alan Shepard’s golf strokes on the Moon in 1971, the stunt arranged by a Canadian company through Russia’s Roskosmos space agency for an undisclosed fee is clearly a sales booster – and may not sit well with Nasa.