See European cargo spacecraft burn up in spectacular fashion

European Space Agency

Most of the materials sent into space during resupply missions to the International Space Station make a one-way trip. Supply vehicles such as Orbital Sciences' Cygnus capsule usually stay docked at the ISS for months, during which they're filled with trash and junk. When they leave, the capsules and their contents burn up during reentry into the atmosphere over the ocean.

(The exceptions to this are Soyuz capsules, which rotate crew on and off, and SpaceX's Dragon, which has returned lab samples to Earth when it splashed down into the Pacific.)

Since the reentry is specifically targeted for uninhabited areas, these events usually take place without anyone to witness the flaming plunge made by the capsule. But that wasn't the case when the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle took the plunge in early November. The capsule, named Albert Einstein, underwent reentry 100 kilometers below the station itself, and the astronauts on board the station managed to capture a few pictures of the vehicle's demise. They've stitched them together into a movie, which is looped in the video below.