Europe's ATV Departs ISS for the Final Time

The European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle(ATV) has departed the International Space Station for the final time in the programme's history.

ESA's fifth and final Automated Transfer Vehicle(ATV-5) which is named after the Belgian cosmologist George Lemaître, undocked from the aft port of the Zvezda Service Module of the ISS at 13:42 GMT.

ATV-5 docking with ISS last year
credit: NASA

After firing it's thrusters, ATV-5 backed away from the station as the vehicle positioned itself into a lower orbital altitude, bound for a fiery re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.

Europe's flagship cargo spacecraft was originally scheduled to enter the Earth's atmosphere at the end of February in a new, shallow dive that would allow NASA and ESA teams the opportunity to monitor the breakup of the vehicle and learn from it's reentry. 

Unfortunately however, a failure in one of the vehicle's power chains last week led to the cancellation of the shallow reentry experiment, and George Lemaître will now follow the standard reentry profile just like his predecessors, and will burn up over the Pacific Ocean on Sunday evening.

ATV-5 Mission Overview

ATV-5 launched atop an Ariane rocket from the European space port in French Guiana last year as the heaviest of the five Automated Transfer Vehicles sent into space. It carried over 6,600 kg worth of supplies and experiments to the station.

Over 186 days docked to the orbiting complex, the crew on board have been busy unpacking vital equipment and in turn, have loaded ATV with rubbish and other waste. Mission controllers in the ATV Control Center in Toulouse have been sending commands to the vehicle to pump water, air and fuel into the station's tanks.

The vehicle has also been used to fire its thrusters to facilitate a change in the station's orbit for debris-avoidance purposes, and also to support the arrival of future cargo vessels by lowering the station's orbit. This enables a larger quantity of cargo to be carried to the ISS.

What's Next?

In a testament to the success of the ATV programme, NASA and ESA announced in 2014 that the flight systems used on the ATV vehicles would be used to comprise the Service Module elements of NASA's next generation spacecraft, Orion on its missions to carry astronauts to deep space.

The first flight of the ESA Service Module will take place on Orion's first flight around the Moon in 2017.

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ISS Monthly Recap for July 2014

The six person Expedition 40 crew aboard the International Space Station have wrapped up a very busy month conducting various robotics operations, and a record amount of science and research aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Humans have been living on the ISS for over 5,000 consecutive days

The month began with astronauts in the US segment of the station carrying out maintenance on the Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly(CDRA). CDRA is responsible for taking unwanted carbon dioxide in the station's atmosphere out of air circulation. This is important in developing systems for removing CO2 from astronauts' breathing air on missions to Mars and beyond in future spacecraft like NASA's Orion Capsule, which will make its first test flight later this year.

July 12 marked the historic milestone of 5,000 days of humans living aboard the International Space Station. Since the first launch of the Expedition 1 crew back in November 2000, over 24,000 hours of science have been conducted aboard the orbiting lab over 40 expeditions. Coincidentally, the current crew aboard the station set a record in July for the amount of science conducted during a week. The six astronauts and cosmonauts completed 82 hours worth of science and research, which will benefit people back on Earth, as well astronauts living in space.

July was a busy month also for the arrival and departures of cargo spacecraft.
On July 16, the Orbital Sciences Cygnus cargo craft arrived at the International Space Station. After launching from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on July 13. Expedition 40 commander Steve Swanson and Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst supervised the rendezvous and docking procedures three days later on the 16th. Hatches between the ISS and Cygnus were opened on the following morning.

The arrival of Cygnus was followed up by the departure of the Russian Progress 55 resupply ship, which undocked from the station's Pirs Docking Compartment on July 21. 

Cygnus is captured by the station's robotic arm on July 16.

And we all know that things just wouldn't be the same at the ISS if there wasn't a Progress attached. So that's why just a couple of days later the Progress 56 resupply ship launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, arriving at station on July 24- just six hours after launch.

Finally, in the wee hours of the morning of July 30, the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle launched from the Kourou Space Center in French Guiana on the final mission of the ATV programme. 

ATV-5, which is named after Belgian astronomer George Lemaitre, will spend the next two weeks making its way to the station before it's automated docking to the Zvezda Service Module on August 12.

In summary, July was a very eventful, busy and successful month aboard the International Space Station. With all this new cargo aboard, August has all the makings of being yet another very busy and exciting month aboard the ISS with a series of spacewalks planned for mid-August, along with the arrival of George Lemaitre to the International Space Station.