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Europeans Will No Longer Resupply International Space Station


The Automated Transfer Vehicle holds for checks just a few feet away from docking to the Zvezda service module.
The Automated Transfer Vehicle holds for checks just a few feet away from docking to the Zvezda service module.

An unmanned European spacecraft has resupplied the International Space Station for the last time.

The cargo ship named for Georges Lemaitre, who proposed the "Big Bang" theory, docked at ISS on Tuesday.

The craft carried 6.6 tons of fuel, water, oxygen, food, clothes and scientific experiments to the six-member crew aboard ISS. The vessel launched July 30 from Kourou in French Guiana.

The cargo ship will remain docked with ISS for six months. It will then be allowed to burn up in a controlled re-entry over the South Pacific.

ISS will be supplied in the future by the Russians and two NASA-contract firms.

The ISS crew will use the 10-meter (33-feet) pressurized cargo ship in the meantime to expand their living space and its engines to give a boost to ISS. That is needed because ISS loses altitude each day through atmospheric drag.

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