Space, The Final Fairway

In what will easily be the longest 6-iron shot in golf history, a Russian cosmonaut, Pavel Vinogradov, 52, is scheduled to hit a gold-plated golf ball this summer from a makeshift tee outside the International Space Station.

If all goes as planned, the 17,000 mph smash with a golf club will travel 2.1 billion miles in orbit before burning up in Earth's atmosphere, giving a Canadian golf club manufacturer the kind of publicity that can't be found back on Earth.

The out-of-this-world tee shot is the brainchild of an engineering professor at the University of Windsor in Canada, Nataliya Hearn, who is also president and chief executive of Toronto-based Element 21 Golf Company.