Has the Fermi Paradox been solved, and sentient life has made contact for the first time? Not quite, but as a resident of the International Space Station (ISS), peering out the window into the heavens seldom yields two pairs of “eyes.” So, what exactly do you do? You go to Twitter right away. After witnessing the Russian supply vehicle leave the space station and return home, astronaut Sergey Korsakov tweeted, “Progress MS-18 successfully undocked and left.” “However, who are those stowaways keeping an eye on us?”
The Daleks from Dr. Who were followed by R2D2 and Jawas from Star Wars. We’re also bringing in the Iron Giant, albeit on a lower scale. Korsakov also included a close-up of the beady-eyed observers, which are, of fact, merely parts of the cargo ship’s exterior catching the light. The craft has been resupplying the International Space Station with fuel, research equipment, oxygen, water, and food, but that wasn’t its entire mission. When docked, the autonomous spacecraft is also used to adjust the ISS’s orbit, whether it’s to help the space station leap out of the path of ever-increasing space trash or to reboost the space station when it starts to drag.
The mission, which has been docked to the ISS for 214 days and is known to NASA as ISS Progress 79, has removed 1.3 tonnes of rubbish, end-of-life equipment, and debris, according to cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev of Russian official media TASS. When it returned to Earth, it burnt up in the atmosphere, exploding in a flaming death above the Pacific Ocean.We hardly knew you, small space droids.
The Progress MS-18 spacecraft, which had departed from the International Space Station earlier on Wednesday, has been abandoned in the Pacific Ocean, far away from important trade routes, according to Russia’s space agency Roscosmos. The spacecraft’s engine was fired for four minutes at 14:11 Moscow time for the braking maneuver.
“The Progress thereafter exited its orbit and ceased to exist. At 14:51:10 Moscow time, several unburned bits landed into the Pacific Ocan, distant from main maritime routes “Roscosmos announced the news on its Telegram channel. The Progress MS-20 ship will launch and dock with the ISS on June 3 when the cargo spacecraft has left a docking port. The engines of the Progress MS-18 were fired nine times to alter the ISS orbit, including three times to prevent colliding with space junk.
