Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Final European cargo ship docks with ISS

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: August 13, 2014 9:12:57 AM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Final European cargo ship docks with ISS

ATV COMPLETES FINAL AUTOMATED DOCKING

ATV-5 docks
12 August 2014
In a flawless demonstration of technology and skill, ESA's fifth and final ATV, Georges Lemaître, docked with the International Space Station today, fixing itself firmly for a six-month resupply and reboost mission.
The fully automated docking came at 13:30 GMT (15:30 CEST), just a few moments after the cargo vessel's extended probe made contact with the cone on the aft of Russia's Zvezda module.
After contact, a series of hooks latched and closed, making a firm mechanical connection with the Station. Later, data and electrical connections were created, allowing ATV to draw power from the orbital outpost and for the Station computers to talk directly to ATV.
The sequence came at the end of several hours of automated manoeuvres, during which ATV powered itself through a series of waypoints starting some 40 km behind and just below the Station.
ATV-5 in orbit prior to docking
"From 39 km to just 250 m from the Station, ATV navigated itself using relative satnav signals, in which both the Station and ATV compare their positions using GPS," says Jean-Michel Bois, leading the ESA operations team at the ATV Control Centre in Toulouse, France. Mission operations are run jointly with France's CNES space agency.
"For the final 250 m, ATV navigated using a 'videometer' and 'telegoniometer', which use laser pulses to calculate the distance and orientation to the Station."
The entire process was completed flawlessly, carefully monitored by the ground team and ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst and cosmonaut Sasha Skvortsov on the Station.
"European cargo spaceship Georges Lemaître has successfully docked to the ISS and the crew sends their congratulations to all the brilliant engineering teams on the ground and in ATV Control Center in Toulouse and in Moscow and to those who have contributed over the last 20 years to the development of one of the most advanced resupply vessels that circles our planet," said ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst on board the ISS.
"While this is the last of the ATV flights, the know-how and technology will soon fly again as early as 2017. NASA's Orion spacecraft with the European Service Module are paving the way for the next generation of space exploration."
The crew will open the hatch and enter briefly over the next day, installing a fan to freshen the internal air before ATV is made ready for daily use.
One of ATV's most crucial capabilities – using its thrusters to reboost the Station's altitude – will be tested in just two days, with a test burn scheduled for 14 August.
ATV-CC teams during rendezvous
"The final arrival of Europe's ATV space freighter was almost anticlimactic, as the vessel's made-in-Europe docking technology performed perfectly for the fifth and final time," said Massimo Cislaghi, ATV-5 mission manager.
"Most importantly, the crew in space and the ESA, CNES and industry teams on ground performed magnificently, and it is thanks to their dedication over the life of this project that ATVs have won a reputation for being some of the most reliable and dependable space vessels ever flown."
Named after the Belgian scientist who formulated the Big Bang Theory, ATV Georges Lemaître lifted off at 23:47 GMT on 29 July (01:47 CEST 30 July) on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
The vehicle is carrying 6602 kg of freight, including 2680 kg of dry cargo and 3921 kg of water, propellants and gases.
The cargo includes complex scientific hardware, such as the electromagnetic levitator for experiments to improve industrial casting processes. The unit will allow finer metal castings and more precise measurements than can be obtained on Earth, where readings are affected by gravity.

Copyright 2000 - 2014 © European Space Agency. All rights reserved.

ByWilliam HarwoodCBS NewsAugust 12, 2014, 11:08 AM
European cargo ship brings supplies to space station
The European Space Agency's fifth and final space station cargo ship -- ATV-5 -- closes in for docking Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2014, seen head on in this view from an engineering camera that provides data showing the spacecraft's orientation and velocity. NASA TV

The European Space Agency's fifth and final space station cargo ship glided to a smooth automated docking Tuesday after a flawless rendezvous, bringing more than seven tons of supplies, equipment, spare parts and propellant to the orbital lab complex.
Launched July 29 from Kourou, French Guiana, aboard a powerful Ariane 5 rocket, the Automated Transfer Vehicle, or ATV-5, docked at the aft port of the Russian Zvezda command module at 9:30 a.m. EDT as the two spacecraft sailed 260 miles above southern Kazakhstan. The cargo ship, named after the Belgian priest and astrophysicist Georges Lemaitre, will remain attached to the station until early next year.
"Docking confirmed. Contact and capture," said NASA mission control commentator Rob Navias at the Johnson Space Center in Houston as the ATV's forward docking probe engaged the Russian capture mechanism. "George Lemaitre has completed the final docking of an Automated Transfer Vehicle to the International Space Station."
European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst and cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov were standing by in the Russian command module to intervene if any problems developed, but the big cargo ship carried out a picture-perfect autonomous approach, using a sophisticated laser guidance system to home in on the space station.
ATV-5 is loaded with 5,910 pounds of dry cargo, including crew supplies, spare parts and research gear. It also carries 1,858 pounds of water, three tanks of oxygen and air totaling 220 pounds, 4,670 pounds of propellant that will be used by the ATV's rocket engines to change the station's orbit as required during the cargo ship's stay, along with 1,900 pounds of fuel that will be pumped aboard for use by the station's Russian thrusters.
Gerst will serve as loadmaster aboard the space station, overseeing the transfer of dry cargo into the lab complex. The astronauts plan to open hatches between the ATV and the space station Wednesday, carrying out routine procedures to clean the air inside the supply ship before unloading begins Thursday.
The Automated Transfer Vehicle cargo ship, center, lines up on the aft docking port of the space station's Zvezda command module, upper left.
NASA TV
"It's a big event for us," Gerst said last week during an interview with CBS News. "A lot of scientific experiments are in there that I will be actually assembling in the European Columbus module that (will produce) a lot of scientific results that we can bring back for the benefit of all humans, new materials, new science.
"But also, we have a lot of food in that vehicle, we have new clothes, so there are a lot of reasons for an astronaut to look forward to a vehicle like ATV-5."
The Automated Transfer Vehicle is the largest cargo ship to service the space station. But ATV-5 is making the program's final flight as ESA's human spaceflight program transitions to building the service module for NASA's Orion deep space exploration spacecraft, providing power and life support systems for future flights beyond low-Earth orbit.
For its last mission, the ATV was packed with a record load of hardware and supplies. Science gear includes the European Space Agency's 882-pound Electromagnetic Levitator, designed to suspend various metals in weightlessness, heat them to nearly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit and then quickly cool the samples to learn more about the structure and behavior of such materials.
"Blacksmiths have been using this technique for centuries, creating steel tools and weapons by heating, hammering and quenching in water," ESA said in a web description. "This process sets the steel's structure and causes it to be hard and stay sharp.
"Understanding the underlying physics of this simple example is complicated and factors such as gravity and the mould used to hold the metal in place influence the process making it difficult to get to the fundamentals. ... For scientists, observing liquid metals cooling in weightlessness removes unnecessary complexity to reveal the core processes."
Also on board the ATV are a pump for the station's water recycling system and an experimental joystick known as Haptics-1, described by ESA as a "touchy-feely joystick, which will investigate how people feel tactile feedback in space, preparing for remote robotic operations from orbit."
The ATV docking kicks off a busy week aboard the space station with the start of cargo transfers and the unberthing Friday of a commercial Orbital Sciences Cygnus cargo ship attached to the Earth-facing port of the forward Harmony module. Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev then plan to carry out a spacewalk Monday to launch a small "nanosatellite" and to retrieve science gear attached to Zvezda's hull.
© 2014 William Harwood/CBS News

Last European cargo ship docks with space station
By Mariette Le Roux | AFP

View Photo
AFP/ESA/AFP/File - Picture taken and released on July 29, 2014 by the European Space Agency (ESA) shows an Ariane 5 ES heavy rocket carrying the Automated Transfer Vehicle ATV-5 Georges Lemaitre lifting off …more
View Photo
This April 20, 2014 image from NASA TV shows a cargo craft berthed to the Earth-facing …
Europe turned a page in its space flight history on Tuesday when it delivered supplies to the International Space Station for the last time.
An automated cargo ship successfully docked with the ISS as scheduled in a precision manoeuvre broadcast live on the web.
The Georges Lemaitre automated transfer vehicle (ATV), named after the father of the Big Bang theory of how the Universe was formed, is the most complex spacecraft ever built in Europe.
It is the fifth and last such robot freighter that Europe had pledged for lifeline deliveries to the ISS, a US-led multi-national collaboration.
The ATV made contact with its target at 1330 GMT as planned at an altitude of 400 kilometres (250 miles) above the Earth and travelling at a speed of 28,800 km (18,000 miles) per hour, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.
A set of hooks then latched on to the orbiting outpost, and data and electrical connections were made to allow the ATV to draw power from the ISS and communicate with it.
"The crew will open the hatch and enter briefly over the next day, installing a fan to freshen the internal air before ATV is made ready for daily use," the ESA said.
- Bread pudding, coffee, noodles -
Weighing in at more than 20 tonnes, the double decker bus-sized craft brought the biggest-ever payload of more than 6.6 tonnes, including fuel, water, oxygen, food, clothes and scientific experiments for the six ISS crew.
After unloading its cargo, the 10-metre (33-feet) pressurised capsule will provide additional living and working space for the astronauts and use its onboard engines to boost the altitude of the space station, which loses height through atmospheric drag every day.
Included in its payload are 850 litres of drinking water -- the most ever -- and three tonnes of fuel.
Many of the 1,232 items on board bring home comforts to the astronauts who spend half-a-year at a time in tough, weightless conditions.
They will receive bread pudding, orange and mango juice, cheese noodles, dental floss and crucially, 50 kilogrammes of coffee to "rejuvenate" the crew, said ATV-builder Airbus Defence and Space.
With no washing machine in space, the robot craft also brings clean underwear and socks, as well as scientific experiments.
At the end of its six-month mission, filled with garbage and human waste, the spacecraft will undock and burn up in a controlled re-entry over the South Pacific.
- Historic demise -
The Georges Lemaitre will make history with its fiery death -- for the first time an ATV will make a shallow reentry into the atmosphere, paving the way for the ISS' own demise scheduled for 2024, said the ESA.
Due to its much larger size, there is a risk that ISS fragments will bounce back into space off the atmosphere if it enters too straight, and so the ATV will provide important data on the optimal angle to be used -- filmed by an onboard camera in another first.
The 10-metre (33-foot) pressurised capsule was the heaviest ATV ever launched by an Ariane 5 ES rocket, following on the hi-tech trail of four others sent into space by the ESA since 2008.
Since the US space shuttle was retired in 2011, the ATV had the largest cargo capacity of all vehicles resupplying the orbiting outpost.
Although the Georges Lemaitre will meet an abrupt end, its technology will live on: ATV-derived hardware is to be included in the design for NASA's Orion spacecraft, which will take humans to the Moon and beyond, and is scheduled for a test flight in 2017.
The ISS will in future be resupplied by Russia's Progress freighter and the Dragon and Cygnus craft built by two NASA-contracted private American firms -- Space X and Orbital Sciences.

Copyright © 2014 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.

Europe's automated cargo craft makes final service call
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
August 12, 2014
Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle made its final cargo delivery to the International Space Station on Tuesday, completing a smooth computer-controlled docking to resupply the orbiting laboratory with 7.3 tons of fuel, water, experiments and provisions.

The Automated Transfer Vehicle approaches the space station's Zvezda service module in this image tweeted by astronaut Reid Wiseman living aboard the complex. Photo credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman

Fitted with distinctive X-shaped solar arrays, the European Space agency's ATV cargo craft appeared as an insect looming behind the space station, with live television views showing the spaceship firing off rocket thrusters to manage its approach.
With a glacial closing rate of about 2 inches per second, the 20-ton supply ship linked up with the space station's Zvezda service module at 1330 GMT (9:30 a.m. EDT) as the spacecraft sailed 260 miles over southern Kazakhstan at a velocity of more than 17,000 mph.
Lasers and radars guided the ATV for the final phase of the rendezvous, which completed a two-week journey after the craft's July 29 launch aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana.
The ATV's cargo complement includes crew clothing, food, rocket fuel, water and experiments, including fish for a Japanese aquatic investigation. Soy sauce, coffee and tiramisu are also on-board.
The space station's crew will open the hatches leading to the ATV on Wednesday. After ensuring the spaceship's air is clean, cargo unloading is scheduled to begin Thursday.
The massive supply load is the biggest delivered to the space station since the last space shuttle mission in 2011. No other vehicle is capable of taking up so much cargo to the outpost.
Named for Georges Lemaitre, the Belgian priest and physicist behind the Big Bang theory, the cargo spacecraft is the last in a line of five European resupply freighters, a 3 billion euro ($4 billion) program that started with studies in the late 1980s before ESA committed to the spaceship's development.
About 14,500 pounds of cargo and fuel was delivered with the ATV's docking Tuesday.
The cargo complement includes 1,896 pounds of propellant to be pumped inside the Russian Zvezda service module, 1,858 of fresh water, 220 pounds of air and pure oxygen, and more than 5,900 pounds of dry cargo.
When docked to the aft end of the space station's Russian segment, the ATV will raise the lab's altitude and maneuver it out of the way of space junk.
The largest piece of hardware aboard ATV 5 is an electromagnetic levitator for ESA's Material Science Laboratory inside the Columbus module. The device will melt down metallic samples for research in material thermodynamics, according to ESA.
An upgrade for NASA's robotic satellite servicing testbed on the space station was also carried by the ATV. An articulating borescope inspection tool will be added to the satellite servicing experiment to test in-space inspection capabilities.
With the five ATVs, Europe sent up 31,446 kilograms, or 69,327 pounds, of cargo, fuel, water and air to the space station, according to Thomas Reiter, head of ESA's human exploration and operations directorate.
"Georges Lemaitre is the last ATV, six years after the launch of the first, which was in March 2008," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA's director general. "Six years have gone by in the meantime, but the ATV is, and will remain for a long time to come, a unique space vehicle. It's the most complex vehicle that ESA and European industry have ever developed and produced. It's both a launcher and a satellite. It's both automatic and man-rated. It's capable of unparalleled accuracy and controlled atmospheric re-entry."
ESA is retiring the ATV in favor of a new program to design and build the service module for an unmanned test flight of NASA's Orion multipurpose crew vehicle set for launch at the end of 2017.
"To say it very bluntly, if Europe had not done ATV, the service module for [Orion] MPCV would have been a no go," said Bart Reijnen, head of orbital systems and space exploration at Airbus Defence and Space.
Officials said they wished to put engineers to work on developing a new spacecraft instead of building more ATVs. Cargo deliveries to the space station will continue with a fleet of supply vehicles from the United States, Russia and Japan.
The U.S. Dragon and Cygnus cargo craft, along with Japan's H-2 Transfer Vehicle, can carry up larger experiments than the ATV, which attaches to the Russian segment of the space station with a smaller passageway than NASA's modules.
Russia's Progress spacecraft delivers propellant, but in smaller quantities than the ATV.
But the ATV is the only cargo craft to do it all.
The ATV missions were part of a barter agreement between ESA and NASA. The resupply capabilities offered by the ATV paid Europe's share of the space station's operating costs through 2017.
ESA's payment for the station's operating expenses from 2017 through 2020 will be paid with the provision of the Orion spacecraft's service module, which is valued at approximately 450 million euros, or about $600 million.
At the end of the ATV 5 mission, currently scheduled for January or February, the ATV will undock from the space station's Zvezda service module with trash and waste. Like the previous European cargo ships, the ATV 5 mission will plunge back into the atmosphere, destroying itself and the garbage inside, clearing precious room on the space station for fresh experiments and cargo.
But NASA and ESA officials have devised a plan to change the re-entry trajectory to collect data on how the ATV responds when it falls into the atmosphere, helping engineers validate computer models to predict how the space station will re-enter at the end of its mission as a crewed orbiting research laboratory.
Pending final approval from safety officials, the shallow re-entry profile would occur over the uninhabited South Pacific Ocean.
The ATV also carries an internal camera to record and transmit imagery of the re-entry from inside the spaceship's pressurized module.

© 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.

European Cargo Spaceship Makes Final Delivery to Space Station
By Mike Wall, Senior Writer | August 12, 2014 10:00am ET

ATV-5 Georges Lemaître, the European Space Agency's fifth and last Automated Transfer Vehicle cargo ship, arrives at the International Space Station on Aug. 12, 2014 to deliver more than 7 tons of supplies. Europe's ATV spacecraft are one of several unmanned cargo ships keeping the space station stocked with supplies.
Credit: NASA TV View full size image
An unmanned European cargo vessel has linked up with the International Space Station for the last time.
The European Space Agency's fifth Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV-5) joined up with the station at 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT) on Tuesday (Aug. 12) as both spacecraft sailed high over southern Kazakhstan in Central Asia. The delivery is the final one by Europe's ATV fleet of spacecraft, which has been resupplying the orbiting lab since 2008.
Tuesday's ATV docking at the aft end of the station's Russian-built Zvezda module was "as flawless as can be," NASA spokesman Rob Navias said during a live broadcast of the orbital meet-up. "A perfect rendezvous and a textbook docking." [Europe's Last ATV Space Mission in Pictures]
The huge ATV-5, which is named "Georges Lemaître" after the Belgian astronomer and priest credited with originating the Big Bang theory in 1927, blasted off from French Guiana atop an Ariane 5 rocket on July 29. The vehicle is packed with more than 7 tons of food, water, spare parts and scientific experiments, which the crew of the space station's current six-man Expedition 40 will begin offloading soon.
The European Space Agency's ATV cargo vehicle delivers 8.3 tons of solid and liquid cargo to the International Space Station. See how the unmanned spacecraft work in this Space.com infographic.
Credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics Artist
View full size image
The scientific gear includes a European Space Agency (ESA) experiment called Haptics-1, which will install an advanced joystick on the station. Astronauts will use the joystick to play simple video games, helping researchers understand how microgravity affects motor control, ESA officials said.
Also flying to the station aboard Georges Lemaître is ESA's "electromagnetic levitator," a metal-melting experiment designed to reveal how atoms arrange and rearrange themselves. (It's difficult to study the fundamental physics involved in the melting/solidifying processes here on Earth, where gravity plays such a big role, ESA officials said.)
Georges Lemaître also carries some new rendezvous and docking sensors that could be used on future European spacecraft. The cargo ship tested this technology out during a close flyby of the space station on Friday (Aug. 8), when ATV-5 passed just 4.3 miles (7 kilometers) beneath the $100 billion orbiting complex.
The resupply craft will stay docked with the station for about six months, ESA officials have said. Georges Lemaître will then be loaded up with trash and sent to burn up in Earth's atmosphere, as the four previous ATV vessels have done.
Those other four ATV craft were known as "Jules Verne" (which launched in March 2008), "Johannes Kepler" (launched in February 2011), "Edoardo Amaldi" (blasted off in March 2012) and "Albert Einstein" (lifted off in June 2013).
Unmanned cargo resupply will go on without the ATV vessels. Russia's Progress spacecraft and Japan's H-II vehicle are still flying, as are two unmanned ships built by American spaceflight firms.
SpaceX's Dragon capsule has flown three of 12 missions to the orbiting lab under a $1.6 billion NASA deal, while Orbital Sciences' Cygnus craft has completed the first of eight runs it will make under a contract with the space agency worth $1.9 billion.
All of these resupply vessels are disposable except Dragon. Rather than burn up in Earth's atmosphere, it makes a soft, parachute-aided ocean splashdown and can be used again.

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