MOSCOW, June 19 (RIA Novosti) - A Russian launch vehicle will be sunk in the Pacific Ocean Monday evening after being undocked from the world's sole orbital station earlier in the day, a Mission Control official said.
The Progress M-55, which has been loaded with garbage from the International Space Station, will be undocked Monday at 7.06 p.m. Moscow time (3.06 p.m. GMT). The parts of the vehicle that do not completely burn up in the Earth's atmosphere will crash into the Pacific Ocean at 9.53 p.m. Moscow time (5.53 p.m. GMT) in the "spaceship cemetery" not far from Christmas Island where the Mir station was sunk in 2000.
The Federal Space Agency said May 30 that a Progress M-57 spaceship would be launched on a Soyuz-U rocket on June 24. When it docks with the ISS two days later, it will deliver fuel, consumables, scientific and research equipment and water for Russian and American astronauts Pavel Vinogradov and Jeff Williams.
The agency said the ship would be launched from the Baikonur space center, which Russia leases from the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan.
Vinogradov and Williams, the 13th ISS expedition, began their mission on board the orbital station on April 1.
