MOSCOW. April 18 (Interfax-AVN) - The Progress M-22M resupply ship, which departed from the International Space Station (ISS) over a week ago on an autonomous voyage and housed the Radar-Progress experiment, will be de-orbited and sink in the area of the so-called "Spaceship Cemetery" in the Pacific on Friday, the Russian Mission Control Center told Interfax-AVN.
"The de-orbit command will be given at approximately 7:43 p.m. Moscow time," the source said.
The resupply ship will sink far away from shipping routes, about 3,000 kilometers east of Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, and Progress fragments that survive the fall will not jeopardize vessels. There will be no impact on the environment either as only small pieces of the spaceship can hit the oceanic surface.
Russian scientific experiment Radar-Progress aims to study certain characteristics of the ionosphere by ground stations in Progress engine burns. The spaceship undocks from the ISS before the experiment and stays autonomous all through its period.
The experiment assesses spatiotemporal correlations between density, temperature and ionic structure of ionosphere inhomogeneities created by spaceship engine burns.
The Radar-Progress experiment employs the Progress engine, USB radio equipment and ground radio observation stations.
It was reported earlier that the Progress M-22M resupply ship delivered almost 2.4 tonnes of cargo to the ISS on February 6, 2014.