ISS Fan Club

An unmanned Russian-built cargo ship is headed for oblivion after casting off from the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday.

The automated space tug Progress 29 undocked from an Earth-facing berth on the station's Russian Zarya control module Monday afternoon at 3:46 p.m. EDT (1946 GMT) to begin a week of engine tests before destroying itself in the Earth's atmosphere next week, officials with Russia's Federal Space Agency said.

"It went very well, exactly as planned," NASA spokesperson Kelly Humphries told SPACE.com from the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Federal Space Agency officials said Progress 29 will stay in space until Sept. 9 in order to perform a series of experiments designed to study the plasma environment surrounding its rocket engines. Then, the disposable spacecraft will be commanded to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere over the southern Pacific Ocean, they added.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/080902-progress29-undock.html