Europe's fourth Automated Transfer Vehicle backed away from the International Space Station on Monday, firing thrusters to vacate the outpost's safety bubble and begin positioning itself for a destructive re-entry Saturday. <\/p>\n
The spaceship's Russian docking system pushed the vehicles apart, then the ATV's rocket jets fired to accelerate its rate of departure, exiting the space station's \"keep-out sphere\" a few minutes after undocking. <\/p>\n
In the minutes before undocking, controllers oversaw the activation of the ATV's flight systems, navigation computer and the unlatching of hooks connecting the European spaceship to the space station. <\/p>\n
The undocking marked the end of a 134-day stay at the space station since the ATV arrived June 15 with seven tons of cargo, including food, experiments, spare components, water, oxygen and rocket fuel. <\/p>\n
About the size of a London double-decker bus, the ATV was responsible for maintaining the space station's orbit during its four-month mission, boosting the outpost's orbit to counter the minuscule effects of atmospheric drag. <\/p>\n
Astronauts replaced the cargo delivered to the space station with trash stowed inside the ATV's pressurized compartment. Liquid waste was pumped inside the ATV's fluid tanks. <\/p>\n
Named for Albert Einstein, the ATV carted away 4,761 pounds of refuse for the fall back into the atmosphere, according to NASA. <\/p>\n
The undocking cleared the way for three members of the station's six-person crew - Fyodor Yurchikhin, Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano - to relocate their Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft to the aft port of the Zvezda module, which was vacated by the ATV's departure. <\/p>\n
Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano will strap into their Soyuz spacecraft Friday, undock from its current location on the Rassvet module, and fly around to line up for a docking on Zvezda. The activity should take less than 30 minutes. <\/p>\n
The Soyuz relocation will clear the way for three more crew members to dock at the space station Nov. 7, just hours after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. <\/p>\n
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European cargo freighter undocks from space station<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Europe's fourth Automated Transfer Vehicle backed away from the International Space Station on Monday, firing thrusters to vacate the outpost's safety bubble and begin positioning itself for a destructive re-entry Saturday. Continue reading