GLASGOW,
Scotland — Europe's unmanned space cargo vehicle successfully reentered the
atmosphere over the south Pacific Ocean Sept. 29, breaking up into dozens of
fragments that fell into the ocean along a pre-selected path that had been
cleared of maritime traffic, European Space Agency (ESA) officials said.
Program
managers expect that photographic data from two
aircraft ESA hired from NASA, and an imager aboard the international space
station flying overhead at the time, will provide precise data on the amount of
debris that survived reentry.
The agency
released pictures of the reentry Sept. 29 that had been taken from one of the
NASA planes. The photos showed what they said was ATV as it burned up into
several pieces. The reentry had been planned to occur at night to facilitate
photography of the event.
The
Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) undocked from the space station Sept. 5 and
then was guided into position under the station. It had been launched March 9
to deliver food, water, fuel and supplies to the station.
ESA
contracted with NASA to lease two
specially fitted aircraft, a Gulfstream 5 and a DC-8, to be in the vicinity of
the predicted atmospheric reentry.
ATV
managers had estimated that the vehicle, which had been filled with garbage
from the space station before undocking, would weigh about 13,400 kilograms on
reentry into the atmosphere at an altitude of about 120 kilometers. Simulation
studies concluded that it would break up into some 600 pieces weighing between
10 and 150 kilograms each. Of these, several dozen were expected to survive the
descent and to fall into the ocean.
By
comparison, Russia's Mir
space station weighed more than 100,000 kilograms when it reentered the
atmosphere, also in the South Pacific, in 2001.
ATV
controllers had advised maritime authorities in the region that a no-go zone
measuring 2,700 kilometers long and 200 kilometers wide should be established.
ESA is expected
to ask its 17 member governments in November for funds to enhance ATV so that
it is capable of surviving reentry to return space station cargo.
Simonetta
Di Pippo, ESA's director of human spaceflight, said the successful completion
of the ATV mission should help persuade ESA governments that it is worth 200
million euros ($300 million) to transform ATV from a one-way asset into a
vehicle capable of returning several hundred kilograms of experiments back to
Earth.
"The
hardest part of the ATV mission had already been accomplished with the
rendezvous and docking with the station," Di Pippo said here at the
International Astronautical Congress. "But we still needed to demonstrate
the full mission capability. We have now done that today."
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