MOSCOW. Sept 29 (Interfax-AVN) - The European space center based in Toulouse, France, is preparing to remove the ATV Jules Verne space freighter from orbit and for fragments of the spacecraft to crash into the Pacific Ocean on Monday.
"The ATV will enter the dense layers of the Earth's atmosphere on September 29 after two bursts of its engines. We think that the Jules Verne fragments which will not burn in the atmosphere will drop into the ocean at about 5:40 p.m. Moscow time," a source at the Russian office of the European Space Agency told Interfax-AVN.
Russian astronauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko will be watching the Jules Verne descent from the International Space Station (ISS). They will film the process in ultraviolet, he said.
The European Space Agency and NASA will be filming and photographing the descent from two planes. The photographs and videos will be posted on the European Space Agency website.
The Jules Verne undocked from the ISS on September 6 and had three weeks of autonomous voyage.
The freighter was launched from the Kourou spaceport on March 9. It delivered 7.6 tonnes of cargo to the ISS, including fuel, food, water and air, as well as scientific equipment for the Columbus European laboratory. It docked with the ISS on April 3 after more than 25 days of autonomous flight.