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The European Space Agency Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV2), named after Johannes Kepler, undocked from the International Space Station yesterday, Monday 20th June 2011, and will soon be making a destructive fiery re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

The supply ship first docked with the ISS earlier in February this year, taking up with it supplies for the station, and also laden with enough fuel to perform a series of manoeuvres to rotate and move the ISS to a higher altitude.

The 420 tonne orbiting complex now sits at more than 380km above the Earth, 40km higher up than previously, with boosts being needed every now and then to prevent the ISS from crashing back down to Earth.

The ATV is now filled with rubbish and unneeded cargo, and will perform two de-orbit burns before making a controlled re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere over the South Pacific ocean. The majority of the vehicle and cargo will burn up in the very high temperatures experienced during re-entry, around 1600C, and any residue parts will fall into the ocean below.  

The next ATV is already under preparation, named after Italian physicist Eduardo Amaldi, and should launch early next year from a spaceport in French Guiana.

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Astronomers have released this picture of the spiral galaxy NGC 6744, which lies some 174 million trillion miles away from our own Milky Way galaxy, in the southern hemisphere Pavo (The Peacock) constellation, 30 million light years away.

The image, taken by the European Southern Observatory’s MPG/ESO 2.2 metre telescope in Chile, gives us a good idea of what our own galaxy must look like from afar.

The spiral galaxy is almost twice as large as the Mily Way but shows the same sharply defined spiral arms and stretched central region. It even has a small companion galaxy, seen as a smudge to the lower right of the main galaxy, which is reminiscent of one of the Milky Way’s neighbouring Magellanic Clouds.

I wonder what else the two galaxies have in common?

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The final touchdown of US space shuttle Endeavor took place at 06.34 GMT, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida today, bringing an end to the space craft’s last 16 day mission to the International Space Station.

For the record, Endeavour flew into Space a total of 25 times, orbited the Earth 4,671 times, covered 123 million miles, and spent 299 days in Space.

Retirement now beckons for the craft that was named after the ship commanded in 1769 by British explorer James Cook, with Endeavor going on public display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

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