Today at 10:31pm (22:31 GMT) the ATV (Automated Transfer Vehicle) Edoardo Amaldi of the European Space Agency (ESA) successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS).

The ATV is the most complex spacecraft ever produced in Europe, supplying the ISS with essential equipment and cargo. One of the most important missions of the ATV project is to relaunch the Space Station into a higher orbit to offset atmospheric drag. Edoardo Amaldi’s thrusters will reboost the Space Station’s orbit during the five months it remains docked.

The ATV project will provide at least five deliveries to the space station. Edoardo Amaldi is the third unmanned European spacecraft developed by ESA, which already successfully launched ATV-1 Jules Verne and ATV-2 Johannes Kepler in 2008 and 2011.

GMV has been involved since the beginning of the ATV mission, taking part in ESA’s preliminary navigation studies, providing mission analysis support for the CNES, developing the operational flight dynamics system (FDS) for the CNES’s Control Center, with the CNES as prime contractor.

GMV also furnished on-site support for flight dynamics operations throughout the whole ATV-1 mission, from launch to reentry. It is the only Spanish firm that has worked in the CNES’s Toulouse Control Center.

GMV has been responsible for the ATV 2 and ATV 3 spaceflights maintenance and updating of the orbital mechanics system to synchronize any vehicle changes with respect to its predecessors. GMV upgraded the system in light of the lessons learned from the first flight. Still a member of the orbital mechanics operations team, GMV is also responsible for the orbital mechanics database for operational deployment of flight dynamics and for pre-flight system qualification tests.

The docking maneuver culminated a planned step-by-step Space Station approach strategy. The ATV-3 moved under its own control during these critical maneuvers, monitored by an independent control system onboard the Station to ensure the safety of the crew and of each spacecraft.

The agency is already working on the construction of the ATV-4 Albert Einstein and has announced that here will be a fifth vehicle named George Lemaître in honor of the Belgian who developed the Big Bang theory. These fourth and fifth vehicles have been scheduled for 2013 and 2014 launches respectively.

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