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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.'"
RTA: "Only Russia has previously achieved a successful automated docking in space," Dr. Griffin said in a statement.
They actually use the transport to remove all of their rubbish. They can't just throw waste outside, that would present yet another orbital risk. So, they load everything into the supply module (Progress, ATV, or the new Japanese HTV which should get it's first launch next year), and then the supply module burns its engines to re-enter Earth's atmosphere and burning up.
You didn't look very hard, did you ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0TbGyIGv_0&locale=en_US&persist_locale=1
Kindly separate what some inaccurate media summary says and what the ESA itself states. Where exactly does ESA claim to have "the first automated transport spacecraft?". They say it is the first of its kind, i.e. one that navigates and docks fully automatically, which is neither a lie nor an overstatement. And quoting from the Smart-1 (probe with ion drive) site:
This was only the second time that ion propulsion has been used as a mission's primary propulsion systemI haven't bothered checking your "first 3-axis stabilized spacecraft to be operated without any gyro" example but frankly I'm sure I'd not find an "outright lie" here or even a overstatement either.
BBC had a video of this as soon as it happened: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7328816.stm They also have a real-time visualization of where the two modules are, so people can prepare for taking pictures of it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7330925.stm
The Russians have been delivering supplies with the Progress spacecraft. Only people travel in Soyuz.
The New York Times article states:
"[It] is the first of a new class of station supply ships called Automatic Transfer Vehicles"
And it definitely is a new class of suplly ships.
You should not bash an organization based on the wording of an anonymous Slashdot submission of an article which does not even contain this phrase.
There is no such thing as a "parallel course" in orbit.
Read Bate, Mueller, & White, "Fundamentals of Astrodynamics", (Dover Books). (Caution: Math required.)
Imagine two coplanar circular rings, of very slightly different diameter, with a common center. They're concentric. Tilt one slightly with respect to the other, retaining the common centering. The rings now cross at two diametrically opposed points.
Those rings represent non-coplanar orbits. Objects traveling along the two orbits appear to be in parallel course at widest separation, then they start coming together, collide, and start moving apart again.
The cheap way to do rendezvous is get the two spacecraft onto the SAME orbit, with some separation, and then GRADUALLY maneuver one of them to bring it closer. It is extremely touchy work. (This is why Project Gemini spent so much time learning how to rendezvous the Gemini spacecraft with the Agena target: they had to be able to do rendezvous to do the Apollo moon landings.)
Read "Carrying the Fire", by Mike Collins, for some interesting insight into the problem. (Mike Collins was Apollo XI Command Module Pilot.)
The ESA has a low budget compared to the NASA. The major difference is that they do things slowly and step by step. They do one big project (like the ATV development), but a lot of research and engineering is done in smaller missions. And they try to use platforms. For example the Venus Express probe reused the design of Mars Express. They also have a lot "get things cheaper" projects. And they cancelled many expensive projects, which was seen as a set back for Europe at that time. For example the Hermes project. The Ariane 5 launcher was designed to carry Hermes, but as Hermes never got build Ariane became the work horse of Arianespace. So in this point they just got lucky.