The European Space Agency (ESA) successfully launched the ATV-5 (Automated Transfer Vehicle) Georges Lemaître by Ariane 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

The ATV is the most complex spacecraft ever produced in Europe, supplying the International Space Station (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. Georges Lemaître’s thrusters will reboost the Space Station’s orbit during the six months it remains docked.

ATV-5 will deliver more than six tonnes of cargo to the Station, again breaking the record for the heaviest spacecraft launched on Ariane. The ATV project has provided five resupply journeys to the space station. Albert Einstein is the fifth unmanned European spacecraft developed by ESA, which already successfully launched ATV-1 Jules Verne, ATV-2 Johannes Kepler, ATV 3 Edoardo Amaldi and ATV-5 Georges Lemaître in 2008, 2011, 2012 and 2013, 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, and 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, ATV-4 and ATV-5 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 Space Station.