Europe’s unmanned ATV-5 cargo docked with the station … – Le Parisien

Europe's unmanned ATV-5 cargo docked with the station … – Le Parisien

<- Hard dé e: 0.03644585609436 sec -> The fifth and final automatic European freighter, the ATV Georges Lemaitre, docked as scheduled Tuesday at the International Space Station (ISS), 410 miles above Earth to refuel, according to live telecast by the French space agency, CNES the
. Launched on the night of July 29 to 30 from French Guiana on an Ariane 5 rocket ATV-5 is a vessel of 20.3 tonnes, as big as a double decker bus.
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Supervised from the center of the ATV Control hosted in Toulouse CNES, the freighter began Tuesday afternoon its phase lashing automatic. He guided autonomously to the space station via GPS while the two spacecraft circling the Earth at 28,000 km / h, but with a relative velocity between them only a few centimeters per second.
Reaching 250 meters from the ISS, the ten meter long cargo activated its laser guidance system pointed towards a small target attached to the station. The junction was made at 3:30 p.m. French time (1330 GMT).
Once its power grids, computer, etc. connected to the ISS, the lock can be opened and the atmosphere of the ATV will be cleaned and filtered. The six astronauts on the station (three Americans, two Russians and one German) should then be able to take delivery of 6.6 tons of cargo, including nearly 850 liters of drinking water, three tons of fuel, and more than 2.6 tons of food, clothing and equipment for research
With no fewer than 1,232 items on board, the ATV is a hodgepodge. pudding, orange juice, cheese noodles, yarn dental or 50 kg of coffee, according to the inventory made by Airbus Defence and Space, the main industrial partner of the ATC.
fully pressurized, the ATV will also be used as storage space and workplace again for astronauts during its six-month mission. It will also help to enhance regular orbit of the ISS, which otherwise would end up back on Earth.
Early 2015, the ship of ten meters long will be filled with non-hazardous waste generated on board the station. It will detach from the ISS and plunge into the Earth’s atmosphere where it will burn with its cargo.
The swan song of the last ATV will be filmed for the first time from within, thanks to an onboard camera designed to transmit images of the last seconds of the cargo, before burning him.
With the end of the ATC, the ISS will be resupplied by Russian Progress ships and freighters operated by American private companies under contract with NASA, SpaceX (Dragon) and Orbital Sciences (Cygnus).

The French space agency