ESA cargo ship Georges Lemaitre take leave from the ISS to splash down on Sunday

#atv5 #ISS #NASA #georgeslemaitre #ESA #cargoship Georges Lemaitre, the cargo ship of the European Space Agency (ESA) is its fifth and final Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV-5) and it has left the International Space Station before its final splashdown on Sunday as revealed in space.com dated 14 February 2015.
The unmanned ATV-5, is named after the 20th-century Belgian priest and astronomer and with its departure from the ISS an era ends – it had been at the orbiting lab ISS for six months.
The reentry of ATV-5 into the atmosphere over the South Pacific Ocean will be documented by the Expedition 42 crew on board the ISS as well as NASA, ESA and other agencies around the world. The aim of the agencies is "to gather detailed information on the mechanics of the breakup of a spacecraft re-entering the Earth's atmosphere."
Of course, onboard sensors in the ATV-5 would also collect information via its temperature-measuring Break-Up Camera. Incidentally, ATVs have been supplying ISS regularly ever since 2008 - the ATV-1 ("Jules Verne") was launched in March of that year. Next came ATV-2 ("Johannes Kepler") which blasted off in February 2011 followed by ATV-3 ("Edoardo Amaldi") in March 2012, and ATV-4 ("Albert Einstein") in June 2013.
The ATVs have brought in a total of about 34 tons of cargo to ISS, the orbiting lab, NASA and, as informed by NASA officials, the ATV-5, which is as big as a double-decker bus, had delivered more than 7 tons of food, scientific experiments, spare parts and other gear when it docked with the station on Aug. 12, 2014.