A
trash-laden Russian cargo ship cast off from the International Space Station
(ISS) Wednesday and plunged back to Earth, making room for a new resupply
spacecraft set to launch Thursday.
Russian ISS
flight controllers remotely undocked the unmanned Progress 18 spacecraft from
its berth at the aft end of the station's Zvezda service module at 6:26 a.m.
EDT (1026 GMT), NASA spokesperson Kylie Clem told SPACE.com. Separation
of the two spacecraft went smoothly, while ISS Expedition 11 commander Sergei Krikalev
and flight engineer John Phillips observed the undocking, she added.
The
undocking makes room for Progress 19, an unmanned spacecraft set to launch
Thursday atop a Soyuz rocket at 9:08 a.m. EDT (1308 GMT). The space shot will
be staged from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Progress 19
will deliver more than 2.6 tons of fresh oxygen, propellant and food, as well
as vital spare parts and other equipment.
Among the
major items packed aboard the spacecraft is a replacement liquid unit for the
station's Elektron oxygen generator - the primary oxygen generator for the ISS
- which failed
earlier this year. ISS astronauts have relied on secondary oxygen supplies
stored in Progress tanks, as well as oxygen-generating candles to maintain
their cabin atmosphere.
Russian-built
Progress spacecraft provide steady supply shipments to ISS crews, and made the
only cargo shipments during the more than two years between the 2003 Columbia
accident and the July 28 arrival
of NASA's space shuttle Discovery. Another Russian cargo ship, Progress 20, is
slated to launch toward the ISS in December. The next shuttle delivery,
Discovery's STS-121 flight, is expected no earlier than March 2006.
Progress 18
arrived
at the ISS on June 18, delivering more than two tons of supplies, spare parts
and other equipment for the Expedition 11 crew. Krikalev and Phillips spent the
last week packing Progress 18 with waste, trash and other unneeded items before
closing the spacecraft's hatch Tuesday morning.
Russian
space station officials expected much of Progress 18 to burn up during reentry,
with remains to crash into the Pacific Ocean at about 10:13 a.m. EDT (1413
GMT), according to Russia's Interfax News Agency. The spacecraft's remnants
were expected to splashdown about 1,864 miles (3,000 kilometers) east of
Wellington, New Zealand, Interfax reported.
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