Technicians at work inside Jules Verne

“Jules Verne will be in the same flight configuration as for launch except for the several tonnes of dry cargo and the propellants,” says Dore. Although the tests themselves will only take four to five days, it takes weeks to prepare the spaceship and to move it between the different facilities at ESA's centre in Noordwijk.

After the acoustic stress test, the next step will be to check the critical deployment of the four solar arrays, which, with their total span of 22.3 meters, provide electrical power to the spacecraft and to rechargeable batteries indispensable for eclipse periods in orbit. Last year, some recurring anomalies on the drive mechanism of the solar arrays forced engineers to add a back-up device to monitor the good angular position measurement of this vital system. Some 95 minutes after lift-off, the ATV activates its navigation systems and deploys its solar panels, which must track the Sun - as early as possible - to get energy while orbiting at 28 000 km/h.

Thermal tests in summer

Detailed computer analysis of the test data acquired during the acoustic tests will continue in parallel to the post-test inspection and reconfiguration of the ATV for the next test campaign. If everything goes as planned, during the summer the ATV will undergo a series of critical thermal tests, under vacuum and with the ATV operational, which replicate the harsh temperature environment cycle of space.

“These thermal tests are the most critical environmental tests to make sure that all the Jules Verne systems are robust enough to withstand the whole six-month long orbital mission”, says Dore. It will be the largest spacecraft ever tested in Europe in almost half a century of space programmes.

Daniel Sacotte, John Ellwood and Jean-Francois Clervoy visit Jules Verne

From autumn the next challenge for the Jules Verne campaign will be to test the full interaction between the very extensive flight software and the hardware as a whole. Using the Electrical Ground Support Equipment (EGSE), which includes hundreds of cables and umbilical connections and dozens of ground computers, it is possible to replicate the functional environment of the navigation and flight dynamics during the flight of the spaceship.

This was already tested at the Functional Simulation Facility (FSF) at EADS Space Transportation facilities in Les Mureaux, France. This simulation facility includes some of the actual mechanism and flight box replicas, which are the electronic 'brain' and the 'nervous system' of the ATV, and an even larger piece of ground equipment, which simulates all the external interfaces, including up to sixty electronics racks. However, to be sure that the FSF exactly replicates Jules Verne, the results from the two campaigns will be minutely compared.

To make the tests even more realistic, at some point the ATV Control Centre in Toulouse will be added into the loop. The preparation and simulations in closed loop will take up to three months and should take place by the end of the year.

If all the challenges are met according to schedule, Jules Verne will be ready for sea shipment early in 2007. The transportation of ATV by boat from the Netherlands to French Guiana will take two weeks, after which an eleven-week launch campaign will be required before lift-off.

In any case, the actual mission will most likely take place no earlier than May 2007. First, all the international partners have to agree upon the best date to re-supply the Station with the 7.1 tonnes of cargo that is to be carried up by the ATV.