Space freighter starts suicide plunge: ESA

A bus-sized craft that had delivered food to the International Space Station will re-enter Earth's atmosphere overnight for a controlled implosion over the South Pacific, the European Space Agency said Tuesday. The automated transfer vehicle (ATV) undocked from the ISS last Friday after a six-month visit. Its undocking was delayed by three days because astronauts had sent the craft a wrong identification code.
Named after a 20th-century Italian physicist, the Edoardo Amaldi will exit its ISS orbit at 2142 GMT on Tuesday, firing its engines for 14 minutes to place it on an Earth-bound suicide mission. At 0042 GMT the craft will fire its engines again, this time for a second, 15-minute "deorbit burn" - and will start falling to Earth about 20 minutes later. Impact of the debris surviving the atmospheric burnout is scheduled for 0130 GMT, according to an ESA blog.