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ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle launches successfully |
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Written by Derek Kessler on
Sunday, 09 March 2008
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 The world's first dedicated ground-to-space cargo ship launched today from French Guiana aboard a powerful Ariane 5 rocket. The Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle, named by the ESA for the famed science fiction author, had been in development for more than a decade before today's successful launch and will supplement cargo delivery systems like Russia's Progress and the United State's space shuttle fleet.
The ATV is carrying food, supplies, fuel, and clothing to the International Space Station. Also aboard are two original hand-written manuscripts by Jules Verne to commemorate the flight. The cargo ship is about the size of a double-decker London tour bus: 32 feet long and 15 feet wide, and weighing in at 21 tons, with a cargo capacity of another 8 tons. The cargo capacity is three times that of the Russian Progress craft, though it pales in comparison to the 25 ton cargo capacity of the space shuttle.
Jules Verne will spend four weeks on its journey to the ISS as part of a shakedown cruise. Once docked, the automated craft with become a temporary part of the station. Its pressurized short-sleeve environment will be easily accessible by the station crew, and as they remove and use its onboard cargo, the ATV will be filled with waste for removal. After six months, the craft will be ejected from the station and ditched over the Pacific Ocean.
The ATV program will be controlled by a new ESA mission control center built in Toulouse, France. Jules Verne was the first of five planned ATV launches. The ESA hopes to launch one of the 1.3 billion euro ($1.9 billion) cargo ships every 18 months, a move that as part of its agreement to develop the ISS will secure the ESA positions for six-month long duration stays for their own astronauts. Those astronauts, however, will have to be launched aboard a US or Russian spacecraft, as the ATV is not designed to house humans, only cargo.
Several evolutions for the ATV have been discussed, including modifications that would allow it to serve as an emergency escape module for the ISS or as the base for new ESA mini-space stations. To date, all proposed evolutions for the design have been abandoned as too costly, though ESA officials hope that the home-grown technology used in the ATV will lead to the development of future ESA manned spacecraft.
The launch of Jules Verne occured just two days before a scheduled launch of the US space shuttle Endeavour. To avoid an orbital traffic jam, ESA mission control will park the ATV about 1200 miles away from the ISS while Endeavour completes its 16-day construction mission to the station, during which time the ATV will conduct several systems tests before being cleared to dock. After the shuttle departs, Jules Verne will move in and dock at the end of the Russian Zvenda module, one of the oldest components of the ISS.
The ESA has posted a video of the Jules Verne ATV launch.
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"My God, what have I done?"
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