Ioonos

The Jules Verne ATV takes on a seriously heavy load!

On 25 April 2008 the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) successfully carried out one of its main tasks: raising the altitude of the International Space Station (ISS).

The manoeuvre took nearly thirteen minutes and enabled the orbit of the ISS (which weighs 280 tons) to be raised by 4.7 km, reported Astrium, the European company that built the ATV.

The Station should orbit at 350 km but regularly loses altitude due to atmospheric drag. The ISS’s orbit is boosted about once a month. In the past this has been carried out either by Russian Progress ships or American space shuttles.

More about the ATV: go to Ioonos’s animation and further content.