Successful blast-off of ATV-4 Albert Einstein

Yesterday the European Space Agency (ESA) successfully launched the ATV-4 (Automated Transfer Vehicle) Albert Einstein from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

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 reboost the Space Station into a higher orbit to offset atmospheric drag. Albert Einstein s thrusters will reboost the Space Station’s orbit during the five months it remains docked.

With this launch Europe also breaks a special record. Weighing in at 20,200 kilograms, ATV-4 Albert Einstein becomes the heaviest spacecraft every placed in orbit in Europe. The ATV project will provide at least five resupply journeys to the space station. Albert Einstein is the fourth unmanned European spacecraft developed by ESA, which already successfully launched ATV-1 Jules Verne, ATV-2 Johannes Kepler and ATV 3 Edoardo Amaldi in 2008, 2011 and 2012, respectively.

GMV has been involved right from the start 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 in situ support for flight dynamics operations throughout the whole ATV-1 mission, from blast-off to destructive reentry. It is the only Spanish firm that has worked in the CNES’s Toulouse Control Center.

For the ATV-2, ATV-3 and ATV-4 spaceflights GMV has been responsible for maintenance and updating of the orbital mechanics system to bring it into line with any vehicle changes with respect to its forerunners and also for improving the system in light of the lessons learned in each 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.

During the ten days of the flight to the ISS, GMV engineers will be participating in situ in this historic achievement, which will culminate in another automatic docking with the station.

ESA’s fourth Automated Transfer Vehicle, Albert Einstein, was launched into orbit last evening from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Europe’s autonomous supply ship will perform a series of maneuvers to dock with the International Space Station on 15 June.