Scientists Eager to See European Spacecraft's Death Dive

A European space freighter the size of a London double-decker bus is headed for a fiery death on Monday with a team of scientists hoping for a ringside seat.

Researchers from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and other groups are preparing to watch from afar as the unmanned cargo ship Jules Verne plunges through the Earth's atmosphere and burns up over the Pacific Ocean after a successful supply run to the International Space Station. The spacecraft's demise will mark a dramatic end for the first of ESA's new fleet of Automated Transfer Vehicles.

"With the reentry of Jules Verne, there is a certain sadness at the conclusion of what has been such a successful mission," ESA's ATV mission manager John Ellwood told SPACE.com. "However, we know that all the mission requirements were met or exceeded and this has given a great satisfaction to the enormous team which has worked on this amazing project."

Flight controllers at ESA's ATV Mission Control in Toulouse, France, are expected to direct the 19-ton Jules Verne to fire its engines one last time at 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT) on Monday to start a controlled death dive. About 12 minutes after tumbling into the Earth's atmosphere, the spacecraft should burst into pieces and burn up, with any remaining fragments splashing into the Pacific Ocean.

The team of about 55 scientists based out of Tahiti hope to watch Jules Verne's final minutes from two chase planes flying about 373 miles (600 km) apart. The observation campaign has two goals:

• Obtain a first-hand look at how Jules Verne reenters to aid in better ATV designs in the future.

• Use the relatively rare event of a planned spacecraft destruction to shed light on how natural fireballs like meteors explode as they enter Earth's atmosphere.

"We know their size and their impact speed, and we know the exact moment they're coming down," said Peter Jenniskens, the observation campaign's mission scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. "None of that happens with natural fireballs, so with these events you can set your cameras up and you can wait for it and observe it come in."

Launched on March 8 EDT, Jules Verne is a massive cylindrical spacecraft about 15 feet (4.5 meters) wide and 32 feet (10 meters) long that delivered about 8 tons of supplies astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

The spacecraft is designed to be disposable and undocked from the space station on Sept. 5. ESA officials plan to build at least five ATVs to resupply space station crews in return for European astronaut slots on future long-duration missions. Jules Verne's successor, ATV 2, is under construction for launch in 2010.

"This will obviously be used to update our predictions for future ATVs," Ellwood said of watching Jules Verne's destruction.

Jenniskens and his team hope to track Jules Verne's reentry as the spacecraft flies between 46 and 31 miles (75-50 km) above the Pacific Ocean.

"It's a large object, so it should be bright enough for us to observe really well," Jenniskens told SPACE.com. "And it's a destructive reentry, so it's an object that's not protected by a heat shield. It's going to break into pieces."

Past returning spacecraft, like NASA's 2006 Stardust landing and 2004 reentry of Genesis, were protected by a heat shield, giving observers a single, bright target. Jules Verne is unprotected, with much of its reentry light coming from its melting aluminum hull and shock emissions, Jenniskens said.

"We have some idea for what you can expect we made some predictions based on the ATV being intact...but what we're going to see, that's the big question," said Jenniskens. "It's very exciting."

• Video - Europe's Special ATV Delivery
• Video - Astronaut Life Inside Jules Verne Cargo Ship
• From Earth to the Station: Europe's First Space Cargo Ship