Launched from the European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 rocket, the Georges Lemaître carried 6602kg (14,555lbs) of supplies to the extraterrestrial outpost.
Principle among the Lemaître’s cargo was an electromagnetic levitator that will be critical for conducting precise research to improve industrial casting processes. Add to that some 3951kg (8,710lbs) of water and you’ve got quite a haul.
“From 39 km to just 250 m from the Station, ATV navigated itself using relative satnav signals, in which both the Station and ATV compare their positions using GPS,” says Jean-Michel Bois, leading the ESA operations team at the ATV Control Centre in Toulouse, France. Mission operations are run jointly with France’s CNES space agency. “For the final 250 m, ATV navigated using a ‘videometer’ and ‘telegoniometer’, which use laser pulses to calculate the distance and orientation to the Station.”
Over the course of the next few days, astronauts aboard the ISS will slowly open the Georges Lemaître’s hatch, refreshing the air within the module. Once the conditions in the module are acceptable the ISS’s crew will begin unloading supplies and setting up experiments.
With government space budgets significantly reduced from their heights in the mid-twentieth century, autonomous solutions like the ATV Georges Lemaître might be critical for ensuring that space exploration continues to advance. As launch, docking and exploratory technologies increase our ability to reach deep space, autonomous craft may be the lifeline that keeps humanity gazing towards the stars.
Source: ESA