CAPE CANAVERAL: - After years of debate on how to dispose of rubbish from the international space station, NASA has come up with the answer - open the back door and fling it out.

The agency that has long drilled its astronauts and international partners in the merits of responsible waste management is to relax its rules and allow the station's crew to jettison selected items of superfluous or broken equipment.

Earth is ringed by hundreds of thousands of pieces of rubbish, including old rockets, satellites, nuts, bolts and spent instruments. NASA's decision to relax its rules comes as a Russian cosmonaut, Mikhail Tyurin, prepares to add a golf ball to orbiting debris. In an advertising stunt for a golf club manufacturer, which has paid the Russian space agency millions of dollars, Tyurin will launch the world's longest golf shot from outside the station on Wednesday.

NASA calculates the ball will remain in orbit for three days before burning up in the Earth's atmosphere, although Russian scientists say it could circle the planet for more than three years. If it were to hit the station - impossible, experts say - the force would be similar to an 18-tonne truck travelling at 160kmh.

Previous items left in space include a glove, lost by the US astronaut Edward White in 1965, and a putty knife lost by a British astronaut, Piers Sellers, in July.

Officials say that certain objects aboard the space station - such as a worn-out ammonia tank - cannot be carried safely back to Earth.

"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," said Nicholas Johnson, the chief scientist for NASA's orbital debris program.

Most discarded items will burn up in the atmosphere. But until they do they pose an extra headache for NASA, already tracking 13,000 of the largest items to ensure they do not hit the space station.
Telegraph, London