ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle

In a sterile clean room, one module section of the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) called Jules Verne, is under construction by technicians of an integration team at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The ATV cargo carrier is the world's largest and most complex orbiting spacecraft and is a new series of autonomous spaceships designed to re-supply the International Space Station with replacement cargo, propellant, water and oxygen to the orbital outpost. Launched in March 2008 and self-destructed with waste during its return to earth's atmosphere that September, it delivered 4.6 tonnes of payload to the ISS, including 1,150 kg of dry cargo, 856 kg of propellant for the Russian Zvezda module, 270 kg of drinking water and 21 kg of oxygen.

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Copyright: Richard Baker
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In a sterile clean room, one module section of the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) called Jules Verne, is under construction by technicians of an integration team at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The ATV cargo carrier is the world's largest and most complex orbiting spacecraft and is a new series of autonomous spaceships designed to re-supply the International Space Station with replacement cargo, propellant, water and oxygen to the orbital outpost. Launched in March 2008 and self-destructed with waste during its return to earth's atmosphere that September, it delivered 4.6 tonnes of payload to the ISS, including 1,150 kg of dry cargo, 856 kg of propellant for the Russian Zvezda module, 270 kg of drinking water and 21 kg of oxygen.