Robotic Russian Spaceship Leaves Space Station

An unmanned Russian cargo ship undocked from the International Space Station Saturday (Feb. 9) to make way for a fresh delivery of supplies for the six astronauts living on the orbiting laboratory next week.

 The trash-filled Progress 48 supply ship undocked from the space station's Russian Pirs docking port at 8:15 a.m.                   EST (1315 GMT) and was expected to intentionally destroy itself by burning up in Earth's atmosphere a few hours later.

"We just undocked a spaceship from our Space Station," Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, a flight engineer on the space station, wrote in a Twitter post Saturday. "The Progress robot ship is loaded with trash, to burn up like a meteorite in 3.5 hrs."The departure of Progress 48 clears a parking spot for the next Russian cargo ship to use when it launches toward the International Space Station on Monday (Feb. 11). That spacecraft, the Progress 50 supply ship, will launch from the Central Asian spaceport of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 9:41 a.m. EST (1441 GMT on Monday, though it will late evening at the launch site.  Russia's Progress cargo ships are vital spacecraft that have helped keep astronauts stocked with food, clothing and other vital supplies during their six-month missions.