Cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin has broken golfing records by hitting a ball which Nasa estimates will travel a million miles.

The stunt was carried out as part of a promotion by a Canadian golf firm, which paid for a gold-plated six iron to be sent up to the International Space Station.

Nasa estimates that the ball will orbit the earth for two or three days before entering the atmosphere and burning up.

"There it goes!" Tyurin said after making the shot. "It went pretty far. It was an excellent shot. I can still see it as a little dot that's moving away from us."

In fact the ball did not go quite where it was supposed to. Tyurin shanked it to the right, although it missed any part of the Space Station.

The cosmonaut had to take the shot one-handed from a temporary tee attached to the station and, although he had another two balls, there was only time for one shot before resuming construction tasks.

Tyurin is the second member of the space golfing club. In 1971 Alan Shepard took a club and balls to the moon on Apollo 14. He estimated that his shot travelled about 400 yards before being lost in the lunar dust.

The terrestrial record for golf ball distance is held by golf pro Mike Austin, who managed a strike of 515 yards.