Posted on 03/23/2012 10:44:04 PM PDT by Olog-hai
A huge, unmanned European cargo ship will launch to the International Space Station in the wee hours of Friday (March 23) on a mission to deliver a load of food and supplies to the orbiting outpost.
The European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle 3 (ATV-3) is scheduled to lift off from a launch pad in South America at 12:34 a.m. EDT (0434 GMT) on Friday. The spacecraft will launch atop Europe's workhorse Ariane 5 rocket from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana.
The 20-ton cargo freighter, which is nicknamed "Edoardo Amaldi" after the Italian physicist and spaceflight pioneer, is slated to arrive at the space station on March 28. It is the heaviest load of cargo ever delivered to the station by a robotic spacecraft, ESA officials said. …
The European ATV vehicles are disposable spacecraft designed to automatically dock to the Zvezda module on the Russian segment of the space station. The cargo ships remain attached to the outpost for up to six months before they are packed with garbage and deliberately sent to burn up during re-entry through Earth's atmosphere.
The ATVs are part of an international fleet of disposable robot cargo ships that are used to carry hardware and supplies to the space station. Russia's robotic Progress ships and Japan's H-2 Transfer Vehicles (HTVs) also regularly make trips to the orbiting complex. …
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
It’ll take that many days to match orbit with the ISS?
“Meanwhile, NASA’s focus has to be on that Muslim outreach thingy.”
How low we’ve sunk!!
We’ll soon be playing catch up not only to the russians, but the europeans, the chinese, the japanese and the indians.
20 tons? Thats a lot of freeze dried food
We’ll soon be playing catch up not only to the russians, but the europeans, the chinese, the japanese and the indians.
A private US company is scheduled to launch a cargo ship to the ISS on April 30th.
The launch of ATV3.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7rnsABvur4
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