By Xinhua
Beijing : A European cargo ship the size of a double-decker bus is ready for its first flight to haul fresh supplies toward the international space station.
Jules Verne, a massive unmanned cargo ship built for the European Space Agency (ESA) is set to launch Sunday, March 9 from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. A modified European Ariane 5 rocket will loft the nearly 21-ton Jules Verne into orbit from its equatorial launch site on the northern coast of South America.
“It’s the biggest spacecraft we’ve built in Europe and by far the most complicated,” said John Ellwood, ATV mission manager for the ESA.
Jules Verne is the first of a new fleet of unmanned spacecraft, called Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATVs), to launch fresh supplies to station crews through at least 2015. The 32-foot (10-meter) long cylinder with a diameter of about 14.7 feet (4.5 meters) and a roomy cargo hold for food, clothes, new equipment and rocket fuel for the space station.
It is the first new spacecraft in nine years to join the flotilla of U.S. space shuttles, Russia’s manned Soyuz and unmanned Progress spacecraft that make station-bound flights, NASA officials have said.
“The ATV, as a logistics vehicle, carries almost three times the hardware, fuel, water and oxygen that a Russian Progress carries,” said NASA’s space station program manager Mike Suffredini. “It is a major contribution to the program.”
For its inaugural flight, Jules Verne is packed with propellant and equipment for the station’s three-astronaut crew, though ATVs are designed to haul up to 10 tons of supplies to orbit, according to ESA officials. The launch was delayed from a planned late Friday EST liftoff to late Saturday to double check work on its spacecraft separation system.
Jules Verne is due to spend about a week chasing the space station after launch, then park about 1,243 miles (2,000 kilometers) from the station to await the departure of NASA’s shuttle Endeavour before proceeding with rendezvous demonstrations. The U.S. space shuttle is scheduled to launch March 11 on a 16-day construction flight to deliver a Japanese-built room and Canadian robot to the space station.