MOSCOW (AP) -- The remnants of a Russian cargo ship carrying garbage sank in the Pacific Ocean early Thursday after being jettisoned hours earlier from the international space station.

Valery Lyndin, a spokesman for Russian mission control, said much of the Progress M-52 burned up re-entering orbit and the rest splashed into the water somewhere between New Zealand and South America at around 4:05 a.m. Moscow time (0005 GMT).

Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyov and U.S. astronaut John Phillips had loaded the ship with more than a ton (1.12 U.S. tons) of waste and used equipment.

A new Progress ship with supplies and fuel for the station is scheduled to blast off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan early Friday.

Since the grounding of the U.S. shuttle fleet following the 2003 Columbia disaster, Russian ships have served as the only way to shuttle supplies, astronauts and cosmonauts back and forth to the international space station.

On Wednesday, NASA returned the space shuttle Discovery to the launch pad ahead of the first mission since the Columbia disaster. Shuttle managers are aiming for a liftoff as early as July 13.

Also Thursday, a space laboratory carrying European Space Agency and Russian experiments touched down in the steppes of Kazakhstan, said Vera Medvedkova, a mission control spokeswoman. She said officials were still assessing the condition of the Foton-M2 research satellite following the landing.

The satellite, which was launched on May 31, carried some 385 kilograms (850 pounds) of equipment to conduct more than 20 chemical, physical and biotechnological experiments during its orbiting mission.

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