Poster art of the space era

This poster includes an extract of an original 19th Century manuscript by Jules Verne, overlaid on an artist's impression of the first ATV, Jules Verne, in orbit. Jules Verne was launched on 9 March 2008 and reentered the atmosphere on 29 September 2008, having completed a hugely successful mission to the International Space Station.

The Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATV) are probably the most complicated series of spacecraft ever built in Europe. The ATV-series are launched and operated by the European Space Agency. Their complexity comes from the nature of their mission and the constraints imposed by their destination, the International Space Station (ISS).

ATVs are designed to carry over nine tonnes of experiments, fuel, water, food and other supplies from Earth to the ISS orbiting at about 350 km. When it arrives, it becomes a 22-cubic-metre extension to the ISS, giving extra space for the six permanent astronauts and cosmonauts who form the ISS crew.

Original manuscripts by Jules Verne, including De la Terre à la Lune and two of handwritten documents, all lent by the Amiens Métropole libraries (Amiens, France), were launched on board Jules Verne. The two manuscripts, on which the astronomical distances and a celestial chart appear, are part of a collection entirely devoted to Jules Verne, acquired by Amiens Métropole in 2000 and preserved in its libraries.

Verne, who died in 1905, never lived to see any of his imagined voyages come true, but thanks to the first ATV named in his honour, his original notes will have travelled – by their return to Earth in November 2008 on a Space Shuttle – about 150 million kilometres, further than some of the times and distances documented by him.

Whereas Verne estimated it would take nine months to cover the quarter of a million miles to the Moon by his fastest available mode of transportation, the locomotive, ESA's ATV covered the equivalent distance during its first day in orbit following its launch on 9 March 2008 on an Ariane rocket from Kourou, French Guiana.

"After having named the first ATV Jules Verne because of his visionary writings and the vehicle innovative design opening the doors to future European extraordinary voyages in space, we wanted to pay tribute to his inspirational work by flying on board this fantastic spaceship selected notes from his personal original notebooks," explained Jean-François Clervoy, ESA's ATV Senior Advisor Astronaut.

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