European Cargo Spaceship Makes Final Delivery to Space Station

[Buster's Uncle]

European Cargo Spaceship Makes Final Delivery to Space Station
SPACE.com
by Mike Wall, Senior Writer  17 minutes ago



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



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 during a live broadcast of the orbital meet-up. "A perfect rendezvous and a textbook docking."

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 41 will begin offloading soon.

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. , 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.


http://news.yahoo.com/european-cargo-spaceship-makes-final-delivery-space-station-144217624.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Europe's final space cargo ship docks with ISS
AFP
1 hour ago



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 from the launch pad at the ESA base in Kourou, French Guiana (AFP Photo/)



Paris (AFP) - Europe's final robot cargo ship to the International Space Station (ISS) docked with its target as scheduled on Tuesday, in a precision manoeuvre webcast live.

"Georges Lemaitre has completed the final docking of an automated transfer vehicle (ATV) to the ISS," mission commentator Rob Navias announced as the craft made contact at 1330 GMT as planned.

The ATV is the fifth and last such vehicle that Europe had pledged for lifeline deliveries to the orbiting outpost.

It was blasted into space on July 30 from Kourou in French Guiana.

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.

Having navigated its way to the ISS by starlight, the craft docked with its target at a height of about 400 kilometres (250 miles) above the Earth.

The craft is named after Georges Lemaitre, the Belgian astrophysicist who proposed the "Big Bang" theory of how the Universe came into being.

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 each day.

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.

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.


http://news.yahoo.com/europes-final-space-cargo-ship-docks-iss-141934582.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Europe's last cargo ship reaches space station
Reuters
By Irene Klotz  8 minutes ago



The International Space Station's robotic arm, Canadarm2, grapples the Orbital Sciences' Cygnus cargo craft, as seen in this still image taken from NASA TV July 16, 2014. REUTERS/NASA TV/Handout via Reuters



CAPE CANAVERAL Fla. - A European resupply line to the International Space Station closed on Tuesday with the arrival of a fifth and final freighter to the orbital outpost.

Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle 5, known as ATV-5, blasted off two weeks ago with more than seven tons of cargo for the station, a $100 billion orbiting laboratory staffed by rotating crews of Russian, U.S., European, Japanese and Canadian astronauts and cosmonauts.

The ATV’s journey ended slowly with the 32-foot tall (9.8-m), 13.5-ton (12,247-kg) freighter inching closer and closer to a docking port on the station’s Zvezda module while the two spacecraft raced around the planet at 17,100 miles per hour (27,600 km per hour.)

A small metal probe extending from the top of the ATV slipped into Zvezda’s capture cone at 9:30 a.m. EDT as the ships passed 260 miles (418 km) over southern Kazakhstan, a NASA Television broadcast showed.

NASA mission commentator Rob Navias called the docking a "bittersweet moment" for the European Space Agency, a core member of the 15-nation international partnership that built and operates the orbital outpost. Europe’s cargo runs to the station began in 2008.

With two U.S. companies now regularly flying freight to the station along with Russian and Japanese cargo ships, Europe will turn its attention toward building a power and propulsion module for NASA’s manned Orion spacecraft. The capsule, which is being developed by Lockheed Martin Corp, is designed to carry four astronauts to destinations beyond the space station, including asteroids, the moon and Mars.

The fifth and last ATV, the largest of the cargo ships currently servicing the station, carries a record load of 7.2 tons (6,532 kg) of fuel, water, science gear, food and other supplies.

"It’s a big event for us," European astronaut Alexander Gerst, one of six men currently aboard the station, said during an in-flight interview last week.

The cargo includes a European-built electromagnetic levitator, which will be used to suspend and heat metal samples in weightlessness with the goal of improving industrial casting processes.

Once the crew unpacks the ship, it will be loaded with trash and equipment no longer needed on the station. In late January, ATV-5 will be detached from the station so it can fly into the atmosphere to be incinerated. Its final task will be to record and transmit images of its demise to help engineers plan for the eventual removal of the space station from orbit.

The United States intends to keep the station operational until at least 2024. Russia and the other partners’ commitments currently run through 2020.

(Editing by Susan Heavey)


http://news.yahoo.com/europes-last-cargo-ship-reaches-space-station-170523303--sector.html