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Worldwide testing and ISS traffic push ATV launch to autumn 2007

22 March 2007

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Artist's impression showing the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) docked with the Russian Zvezda module.

Credits: ESA - D.Ducros

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10 November 2006. A 120-tonne mobile platform (left), mounted with a set of passive rendezvous targets (retroreflectors) identical to the ones installed on the ISS, are facing the sensors mounted on an articulated industrial robotic arm (right). The relative motion achieved between the two is identical to the one expected during next years rendezvous between the first Automated Transfer Vehicle 'Jules Verne' and the International Space Station (ISS).

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

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Successful extension and retraction of docking system probe

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Under the most stringent conditions of simulated space environment, ATV engineers have successfully ordered the extension and the retraction of the probe (at the top) of the docking system of the spaceship. For 21 days in a row, inside the huge 2300 m³ Large Space Simulator (LSS), the 20-tonne Jules Verne ATV spacecraft has survived perfectly the toughest simulated conditions of space vacuum, freezing temperatures and burning sun radiation.

Credits: ESA

Getting ready

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Fermat Building houses the ATV Control Centre

Fermat Building at the Toulouse Space Centre houses the Automated Transfer Vehicle Control Centre (ATV-CC). The French space agency, CNES, was responsible for the development of the Control Centre, and prepares, coordinates and supports all ATV operations on behalf of ESA.

Credits: CNES

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The ISS Expedition 16 crew, Peggy Whitson and Yuri Malenchenko, during ATV training at the European Astronaut Centre, in Cologne, Germany. (March 2007)

Credits: ESA/DLR

Final launch date

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Europe's cargo spaceship, the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), compares in size to a double-decker London bus.

Credits: ESA-D.Ducros

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Artist's impression showing the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) during docking with the International Space Station (ISS).

Credits: ESA - D.Ducros

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Graphic showing all the steps in the Automated Transfer Vehicle mission scenario - starting with the launch from Kourou, in French Guiana, and ending with the destructive re-entry in the Earth's atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.

Credits: ESA - D. Ducros

Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV)

Jules Verne goes hot and cold Jules Verne passes acoustic test ATV docking trials Successful tests of ATV rendezvous replicate the 2007 Jules Verne mission