Europe's Automated Cargo Shuttle Docks With Space Station

An anonymous reader writes "A successful docking of the Automated Transfer Vehicle dubbed 'Jules Verne' occurred earlier this week. The first of its kind, the crewless ship reached orbit and lightly touched up against the international space station on Thursday. By now astronauts on the ISS will have opened its doors and begun air circulation in preparation of offloading the nearly 7.5 tons of fuel, oxygen, food, clothing and equipment they need to survive. The EU Space Agency sees this as a historic journey for the program: 'The Jules Verne, named after the visionary French science fiction author, is the first of a new class of station supply ships called Automatic Transfer Vehicles. The craft was built by the nations of the European Space Agency as one of Europe's major contributions to the international station. "The docking of the A.T.V. is a new and spectacular step in the demonstration of European capabilities on the international scene of space exploration," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of the European Space Agency.'"

Re:The first of its kind, the crewless ship...

[Brett Buck]

The Progress isn't even the first automated Soviet freighter, so, no, this is far from the first automated transport spacecraft. They even used some Russian parts. Typical ESA over-statement (or outright lie). Just the latest in a long line - "first ion thruster" (although theirs was a Russian design that had been in use for 20+years) and NASA and some commercial entities has also used them), "first 3-axis stabilized spacecraft to be operated without any gyro" (although numerous US missions have used gyroless control dating back close to 50 years), etc.

        Completely unnecessary in this case, because they had a legitimate claim to an accomplishment this time. Their terminal guidance and overall control appeared to have been *far* superior to the typical Soviet system. Much smoother and neater and apparently much finer control.
        Brett

Or at least accumulate a useful scrap yard

[Anonymous Coward]

With so much energy invested in boosting the transport into orbit, you'd think that they'd want to hold onto the materials once up there. They'd be very valuable in due course.

Unfortunately the ISS is in too low an orbit for that, ie. a scrap yard at that low altitude would reenter pretty soon. The space station itself needs to be reboosted up periodically (a really daft design decision).

There's no reason why the transport couldn't boost itself much further out once it has delivered its cargo though. The energy cost isn't large, and there's no time constraint so even ion jets could be used.

Thursday ?

[dbcad7]

I gotta wonder.. If the US had done this, would we be reading about this on Thursday or Saturday ?

Re:And on to the stars!

[QuantumG]

between this and automatic capture and exploitation of asteroids is only a matter of scale and engineering.

.. and will.

Remember, NASA and the vast majority of the space community are still stuck in the von Braun vision: station, shuttle, Moon, Mars.

Re:And on to the stars!

[interiot]

Asteroids come with retroreflectors preinstalled [esa.int]? Asteroids provide such a predictable environment that the exact same approach can be rehearsed countless times in a lab beforehand?

IMHO, the DARPA Urban Grand Challenge moved the science closer to unpredictable real-world mining than this. (though admittedly, both relied heavily on laser rangefinders)

Why no gyros?

[Plazmid]

Why no gyro? Gyros don't need any fuel for attitude control, just solar power. What advantage does not having gyros give you?

Why still dock front on ?

[Davemania]

With the Russian accident in mind, why do they still dock the same way ? From what i've read, a collision could, due to the size of the capsule could be catastrophic. Couldn't they make the capsule approach the space station in a parrallel course rather than heads on, than use the robotic arms or something equivalent to pull the capsule in ? of couse that would mean that they would have to redesign the capsule.

Re:Why still dock front on ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be such a pedant. There's absolutely no reason why you can't fly a vehicle like the ATV on a near-miss course, and then do precisely what the grandparent suggested. As to why they do it one way or another, who knows, I'm not a rocket scientist, but neither are you.

I'm sure the real ones have their reasons, probably having to do with the complexity of catching a passing cargo spaceship with the manipulator arm, or the mechanical stresses involved, or what-not. The two craft approach each other pretty slowly (centimeters per second), so the risk is probably minimal (despite all the exaggerated claims about how difficult an automated docking is--not with today's technology, as the ATV so aptly proves by getting it right on the first run), and they've got an abort button if something looks like it's going to go wrong.