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ATV makes perfect docking debut with ISS |
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Written by Derek Kessler on
Sunday, 06 April 2008
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 Carrying eight tons of cargo for the International Space Station, the Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle successfully completed its first docking flawlessly. The European Space Agency's first cargo ship, and the first dedicated such ship for the ISS, launched last month and after passing a battery of orbital tests, was cleared to dock with the station. ISS commander Peggy Whitson and Yuri Malenchenko watched as the ATV performed an automated docking at the end of the Russian Zvezda service module.
Jules Verne is the first of several planned ATVs the ESA hopes to launch of the coming years to service the ISS and to secure a permanent berth for their astronauts aboard the station. The ATV has been in development for over a decade at the cost of €1.3 billion (US$1.9 billion). Each craft measures 4.5 meters wide and 10 meters long (15 x 32 feet) and has a dry weight of 20 tons. Jules Verne, named for the famed early science fiction writer, carried 8 tons of food, clothing, fuel, oxygen, and other supplies to the station. The 8 ton capacity is three times that of Russia's Soyuz-based Progress cargo ships. Also on board Jules Verne are two original hand-written manuscripts by Jules Verne himself.
The ATV will stay docked to the ISS for around six months while the crew trades out the cargo for trash and other waste. Once Jules Verne is filled to capacity, it will be jettisoned and automatically ditched in a controlled destructive reentry over the Pacific Ocean. Before then, the remaining extra fuel aboard the ATV will be used to boost the 330 ton ISS's orbit. In order to be easily reached by the space shuttle construction fleet, the ISS's orbits through the higher reaches of Earth's upper atmosphere.
The tenuous atmosphere exerts noticeable drag on the station's acre of solar panels, requiring periodic orbital boosting so that it doesn't fall out of orbit. Once construction is complete the ISS will be pushed into a higher orbit that will place it out the atmosphere and beyond the reach of space shuttles laden with heavy cargo. However, by then the US space shuttle fleet will have been retired, having finished construction of the ISS.
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