The European Space Agency describes the docking of its largest unmanned cargo space ship with the International Space Station Wednesday, as “smooth and gentle.”

The ESA says the automated transfer vehicle, called Edoardo Amaldi after an Italian physicist, is delivering nearly seven tons of supplies, including food, drinking water, clothing, oxygen, spare parts and fuel to the space station.

The ATV, which launched from Kourou, French Guiana last Friday, will use its engines to help the space station maintain its proper orbit in the next five months.

The ESA says, at the scheduled end of the mission on August 27, the ATV will detach from the ISS, carrying bags of trash.

The next day, the cargo ship will burn up on its return into the earth's atmosphere over the South Pacific Ocean.