A Mars Odyssey

“Today, Jules Verne ATV has again successfully demonstrated that it is able to perform this vital function on regular basis. Only Progress and ATV can provide this powerful reboost. We should have at least one more reboost in July and two in August,” said Hervé Côme, ESA’s ATV Mission Director at the ATV Control Centre in Toulouse, France.

Not only was June 19th the day for finding ice on Mars, but was also the day for Europe and Russia to raise the International Space Station in its orbit, using Europe’s first space freighter, Jules Verne, which had been launched in March from an Ariane-5 rocket, docking in April at the space station. The purpose of the orbital raisings by regular re-boosts is because of the effects of residual atmospheric drag, making the ISS lose its altitude on a daily basis of about 100m.

The engines of the Jules Verne freighter were used in the docking after launching from the Kourou space center in French Guiana, remaining docked to the Russian Zvezda module for up to six months before being released in September, then burned upon its reentry to Earth’s atmosphere. Which makes one wonder why the American spy plane had to be quickly destroyed before its reentry as it was a danger to the citizens of Earth, when everything else is simply “allowed to burn upon reentry.” Hmmmm….maybe the word spy had something to do with it? Oh well, that’s another story.

Considered a record boost, this was the second time the 300-ton space station had been raised since April by ESA’s Jules Verne ATV, with the first one on April 25th but less powerful than the recent one. The Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) had been prepared for this boost out of the ATV Control Center in Toulouse, France, which provided a 4.05 m/s thrust out of two of the four main engines, all together lasting about 20 minutes. Altogether, this thrust provided a outstanding precision of 1% when the order was initiated by Moscow Control Center, along with several controllers from the ESA, CNES, and Astrium at ATV-CC—monitoring the ATV’s subsystems.

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