With a foot jammed into a ladder to hold him steady, Russian astronaut Mikhail V. Tyurin sliced a lightweight golf ball into orbit last week with a one-handed swing during a space walk outside the International Space Station.

The shot some 200 miles above the Earth was a promotion for a Canadian golf club manufacturer, which paid an undisclosed sum to the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation in the latest venture by the Russians to subsidize their space program.

In recent years, the Russians have allowed a Kodak banner on their side of the space station, launched a rocket with a Pizza Hut logo, and used its program to promote Pepsi, RadioShack and Lego.

The Russian space agency’s tourism business is booming, too. Since 2002, four tourists have shelled out about $20 million each to ride into space aboard a Russian Soyuz craft. The most recent was Anousheh Ansari, a telecom entrepreneur, in September.