CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The International Space Station has one fewer capsule and a lot less trash.
A commercial cargo ship ended its five-week visit this morning. NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins used the space station's big robot arm to release the capsule, called Cygnus, as the orbiting lab sailed 260 miles above the South Atlantic.
Cygnus is filled with garbage and will burn up tomorrow when it plunges through the atmosphere, over the Pacific.
Orbital Sciences Corp. launched the capsule last month from Virginia under a $1.9 billion contract with NASA. The Cygnus delivered 3,000 pounds of goods, including belated Christmas gifts for the six-man crew and hundreds of ants for a student experiment.
The ants are still aboard the space station. They'll return to Earth aboard another company's cargo ship, the SpaceX Dragon.
NASA is paying Orbital Sciences and SpaceX to keep the space station stocked. Russia, Japan and Europe also take turns making deliveries.
The SpaceX Dragon is the only craft capable of safely returning a pile of items, now that NASA's space shuttles are retired. The Russian Soyuz crew capsule has just enough room for three astronauts and a few odds and ends.
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