Off to the ISS for the final time (Image: ESA)

Europe is getting out of the outer space delivery business. The European Space Agency’s final uncrewed Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) is set to blast off tonight from Kourou, French Guiana, to the International Space Station. But lessons learned from operating the craft could help astronauts return to the moon.

The final ATV mission will deliver a variety of experiments along with food, fuel and other supplies. These include an electromagnetic levitator capable of heating metals to 2100 °C and rapidly cooling them, allowing astronauts to study how alloys form in space and whether microgravity changes their properties. Also on board is a force-feedback joystick, designed to study how future astronauts might remotely control robots in space. The ISS crew will test it by playing a version of the game Pong.

Five ATV resupply missions, starting in 2008, served as payment in kind to NASA for allowing European access to the station. Capable of carrying nearly 8 tonnes to orbit, ATVs are the largest of the international fleet that resupplies the station. After making their delivery, they are used to dispose of waste and so burn up in the atmosphere after leaving the station. However, now that private vehicles from SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are starting to take up the slack, the ESA has its eyes on crewed space flight.


Shoot for the moon

“ESA decided not to build a sixth ATV, but to embark on the Orion service module cooperation with NASA,” says Nico Dettmann, the ESA’s head of space transportation. Orion is NASA’s next-generation spacecraft, designed to let humans travel beyond low Earth orbit once again. ATV-derived technology will provide Orion with fuel, air, solar power and manoeuvring thrusters required for planned missions to the moon in 2017 and 2019. The ESA’s stint as a delivery firm demonstrated it has the capability to provide what NASA needs, says Dettmann.

“If we had not done ATV, Europe would not have been able to get involved in Orion,” agrees Bart Reijnen of Airbus Defence and Space, the ESA’s contractor for building the ATV. Even this final flight is experimental, he says, as it will test a laser radar system designed for rendezvousing with “uncooperative” targets like dead satellites that aren’t fitted with docking equipment.

The ATV has been expensive to develop, but it has also provided Europe with its own capabilities to operate a crewed space facility, says Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University in Washington, DC. “The European contribution [to NASA] is certainly helpful and hopefully will continue to grow.”