Progress cargo spaceship to be sunk in Pacific Tue

MOSCOW, April 26 (Itar-Tass) - The Progress cargo spaceship that has
flown for more than three days on low Earth orbit as a scientific
laboratory, on Tuesday will be sunk in the Pacific Ocean, spokesman for
the Mission Control Centre (MCC) outside Moscow Valery Lyndin told
Itar-Tass.
"At 16:38 MSK engines of the Progress M-09M ship are to be switched on
for deceleration, the spacecraft will begin de-orbiting and in 45 minutes
unburned fragments of the cargo craft will reach the surface of the
ocean," he said.
The Progress ship was undocked from the International Space Station
(ISS) on April 22 on command from Earth and taken to a lower orbit. During
the craft's autonomous flight several sessions of the Radar-Progress
experiment were conducted. The experiment's aim was to study by
ground-based observation facilities of reflection characteristics of
plasma irregularities generated in the ionosphere during the work of the
spaceship's engines. The experiment's results were recorded with the use
of a special ground-based radar of the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial
Physics of the Irkutsk branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Before the Progress' undocking from the ISS the station's crew
manually loaded on the ship more that a tonne of garbage and spent
equipment. It is difficult to determine the exact weight of the waste,
because there are voluminous, but light loads, and also there are small
but heavy containers, the MCC explained. Only one thing can be said
definitely - the ship was loaded "to the full."
The Progress M-09M cargo spacecraft will be sunk in a designated area
in the Pacific Ocean far from shipping routes.