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The European Space Agency is developing the ATV's at a cost of 600m Euros. It will deliver supplies of food, water, oxygen, fuel and equipment to the ISS. The ATV can carry nine tonnes - three times greater that the existing Russian Progress craft, but considerably less than the US space shuttle, which can carry up to 20 tonnes.
But Thirkettle says that each Jules Verne capsule will be far cheaper to launch. He estimates that the capsule will cost $160m per launch compared to $500m for each shuttle.
About once a year a new ATV will fly unmanned and automatically dock with the ISS. The ATV can remain docked for up to six months before being loaded with waste and then disposed of in a destructive re-entry.
A prototype version of the cylindrical ATV has been tested in European laboratories. Engineers exposed the craft to extreme acoustic vibrations to simulate launch conditions.
The craft is so large that it must be launched using the giant European rocket Ariane 5. It will weigh more than 20 tonnes when fully loaded and measures 10.1 metres in length and 4.5 metres in diameter. When the old NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe visited the bus-sized cylindrical ATV spacecraft model during crucial tests at ESA's test facilities in Noordwijk, the Netherlands in 2003, one of his main questions was to know how big the European cargo ship was compared to the Apollo spaceship used to reach the Moon in the 1960s and 70s. The ATV (10m by 4.5m in diameter) and Apollo (11m by 3.9m in diameter) spacecraft would be comparable by their impressive size and mass.
Head of Russian Federal Space Agency Anatoly Perminov has informed OFFICIALLY , that ATV-1 "Jules Verne" will be launched not early than second half of 2006, maybe in the beginning of 2007…
Today, about 98 percent of the hardware for Jules Verne, Europe's first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) spaceship, considered to be the most complex space vehicle ever developed in Europe, is already assembled and almost ready to fly.
"Obviously we cannot launch unless we have everything 100 percent ready and fully tested", said John Ellwood, ESA's ATV Project Manager. "The extensive three-year test campaign on such a complicated programme -- with its unavoidable problems and delays -- will push us back by almost one year, to 2007."
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=18210
Technical challenges push the launch of the ATV to 2007
http://www.esa.int/images/compare_atv_array400.jpg
http://www.esa.int/images/atv_cutaway_low,1.jpg
http://www.esa.int/esaMI/ATV/ESA4ZJ0VMOC_0.html
http://www.esa.int/images/compare_atv400.jpg
31 October 2005
The Members of the Regional Government of the Azores have formally inaugurated the site of a new ESA tracking station on Santa Maria Island which will support the flight of Europe's first Automated Transfer Vehicle to the International Space Station.
Each year the Regional Government visits each island of Portugal's far-flung Atlantic archipelago. These annual visits are part of the Statute of this Autonomous Region. This year's visit to Santa Maria Island, the southernmost part of the Azores, coincided with the inauguration of the infrastructure set up to host an ESA mobile tracking station on the Island's Monte das Flores (Hill of Flowers).
The facility comprises a platform to host the mobile tracking station, along with an electricity supply, lightning protection and support infrastructure. Monte das Flores will be part of the network of stations used to track launches from Europe's Guiana Space Centre (Centre Spatial Guyanais or CSG) to the International Space Station (ISS), starting with Jules Verne, the first launch of ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) re-supply vehicle.
'first steps are not for cheap, think about it...
did China build a great Wall in a day ?' ( Y L R newmars forum member )
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another space tug
Innovative space tug to prolong the lives of satellites
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Spacecraft are industrial jewels of invention and technology, but they have limited lives. "Sic transit Gloria mundi." That all things, even glorious, must pass was illustrated in Turner's famous oil canvas of the 'Fighting Temeraire' being tugged to her last berth to be broken up
http://eu.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=18336
But a European industrial space group, partly funded by the European Space Agency, is challenging the notion that old satellites must be retired. The company, Orbital Recovery, has recently signed for its first satellite-servicing mission. EuroNews 'Space' magazine has been talking to some of the actors of the very innovative "Space Tug" project.
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