The Space Station's Trash Leaves on a Cargo Ship Headed for a Destructive Re-Entry

NASA says Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL delivered more than 11,000 pounds of supplies, science experiments and other cargo to the International Space Station on the CRS-24 mission, and is scheduled to depart Friday, Oct. 9. It leaves carrying a different kind of freight: thousands of pounds of disposal items and other unneeded cargo, which goes down with the ship when Cygnus deorbits Sunday, Oct. 11 for a destructive re-entry. Resupply ships are the station's two-way plumbing — supplies and experiments up, garbage down — and the disposal happens by destroying the vehicle itself. That makes the last leg of the mission the least glamorous and, from the station's point of view, one of the most useful.