Progress M-18M re-supply ship disposed of in Pacific Ocean

09:36, 26.07.2013 1 min read

The Progress M-18M re-supply ship fell into the Pacific Ocean as part of a planned disposal operation after undocking from the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) at 00:44 a.m. on Friday, a spokesman for the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) told Interfax-AVN.

"Fragments of the cargo carrier reached the ocean surface," he said.

Only the heat-resistant parts of the spacecraft that did not burn up when moving through the thick layers of the Earth atmosphere fell into the Pacific Ocean approximately 4,140 kilometers from New Zealand's capital Wellington.

The next re-supply ship - Progress M-20M - is expected to lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on July 28.

Russian crewmembers Pavel Vinogradov, Alexander Misurkin and Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA astronauts Christopher Cassidy and Karen Nyberg, as well as Italian crewmember Luca Parmitano are currently working onboard the ISS.