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Automated Transfer Vehicle Jules Verne Was Successfully Used for the First Time to Raise the Orbit of the International Space Station

ESA's Jules Verne ATV was used for the first time early this morning to raise the orbit of the International Space Station. A 740-second burn of the Automated Transfer Vehicle's main engines successfully lifted the altitude of the 280-tonne Station by around 4.5 km to a height of 342 km above the Earth's surface.

After the ATV Control Centre (ATV-CC) in Toulouse, France, had 'woken up' Jules Verne ATV, the manoeuvre started at 06:22 CEST (04:22 GMT) this morning and provided a 2.65 m/s thrust using two of the ATV's four main engines. Controllers at ATV-CC closely monitored ATV's subsystems throughout the long manoeuvre.
"The Station's altitude naturally decreases with atmospheric drag. Until now this has been compensated for by performing a re-boost using the Russian Progress, the Space Shuttle or by the ISS itself," explains Alberto Novelli, ESA’s Mission Director at ATV-CC. "Today, ATV has successfully demonstrated that it too is able to perform this vital function. Only Progress and ATV can provide this high level of re-boost. ATV is unique due to the quantity of fuel available for such manoeuvres."

The re-boost manoeuvre comes just three weeks after Jules Verne ATV successfully docked with ISS on 3 April 2008 delivering 1150 kg of dry cargo, including food, clothes and equipment, as well as additional supplies of water, oxygen and fuel. Since then, the European ISS resupply spacecraft has been in dormant mode attached to the docking port on the Russian Zvezda module.

Today's re-boost sets up the International Space Station for the arrival of Space Shuttle Discovery on the STS-124 mission to deliver the Japanese Kibo laboratory. STS-124 is currently targeted for launch on 31 May 2008. Further re-boost manoeuvres using ATV are scheduled for 12 June, 8 July and 6 August.

Jules Verne ATV is scheduled to remain docked to the International Space Station until early August. At the end of its mission, Jules Verne, loaded with up to 6.5 tonnes of material no longer required by the ISS, will undock and then burn up completely during a guided and controlled re-entry high over the Pacific Ocean.

About International Space Station
The International Space Station (ISS) is a research facility currently being assembled in space. The on-orbit assembly of ISS began in 1998. The space station is in a low Earth orbit and can be seen from Earth with the naked eye: it has an altitude of approximately 350 km (217 mi) above the surface of the Earth, and travels at an average speed of 27,700 km (17,210 statute miles) per hour, completing 15.77 orbits per day.

The ISS is a joint project among the space agencies of the United States (NASA), Russia (RKA), Japan (JAXA), Canada (CSA) and eleven European countries (ESA). The Brazilian Space Agency (AEB, Brazil) participates through a separate contract with NASA. The Italian Space Agency similarly has separate contracts for various activities not done in the framework of ESA's ISS works (where Italy also fully participates). China has reportedly expressed interest in the project, especially if it is able to work with the RKA, though the Chinese are currently not involved.

The ISS is a continuation of several other previously planned space stations: Russia's Mir 2, the U.S. Space Station Freedom for which the funding was cut back severely, the European Columbus and Kibo, and the Japanese Experiment Module. The projected completion date is 2010, with the station remaining in operation until around 2016. As of 2008, the ISS is already larger than any previous space station.

The ISS has been continuously inhabited since the first resident crew entered the station on November 2, 2000, thereby providing a permanent human presence in space. The crew of Expedition 17 are currently aboard. At present the station has a capacity for a crew of three. In order to fulfill an active research program it will be necessary to eventually hold 6 crew members. Early crew members all came from the Russian and U.S. space programs. German ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter joined the Expedition 13 crew in July 2006, becoming the first crew member from another space agency. The station has, however, been visited by astronauts from 16 countries. The ISS was also the destination of the first five space tourists.

The station is serviced primarily by Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft and by U.S. Space Shuttle orbiters. On March 9, 2008, the European Space Agency ESA launched an Ariane 5 with the first Jules Verne ATV Automated Transfer Vehicle toward the ISS carrying over 8,000 kilograms of cargo. Successful docking took place at 1440 GMT on 3 April 2008.

At an estimated cost of €100 billion (~US$157 billion) for the ISS project from its start until the program will end in 2017, the ISS is the most expensive object ever built by humankind.

The assembly of the International Space Station is a major aerospace engineering endeavor. When assembly is complete the ISS will have a pressurized volume of approximately 1,000 cubic meters. Assembly began in November 1998 with the launch of Zarya -- the first ISS module -- on a Proton rocket, and as of March 2008 assembly is about 70% complete.

Two weeks after Zarya was launched, the STS-88 shuttle mission followed, bringing Unity, the first of three node modules, and connecting it to Zarya. This bare 2-module core of the ISS remained unmanned for the next one and a half years, until in July 2000 the Russian module Zvezda was added, allowing a maximum crew of three astronauts or cosmonauts to be on the ISS permanently.

About STS-124
STS-124 is the next Space Shuttle mission, and will be flown by Space Shuttle Discovery to the International Space Station (ISS). The target launch date for the mission is May 31, 2008, moved from an earlier scheduled launch date of May 25, 2008. Completion of the mission will leave eight flights remaining in the Space Shuttle program until its end in 2010, excluding two as-yet-unconfirmed Contingency Logistic Flights.

As of October, 2007, the ISS assembly sequence has STS-124 delivering the Pressurized Module of the Japanese Experiment Module to the International Space Station, which will be mated to the Harmony Module. The Japanese Remote Manipulator System, a robotic arm, will be attached to the Japanese module during this mission. Mission Specialist Mike Fossum and Ron Garan will make at least two spacewalks to install and outfit the Pressurised Module and Japanese Remote Manipulator System. With the completion of STS-124, it will be at least two years before the space shuttle delivers another permanent pressurized module.

The mission will mark:
154th manned US space launch
123rd space shuttle flight since STS-1
98th post-Challenger mission
10th post-Columbia mission
26th Flight to the ISS
35th flight for shuttle Discovery
3rd shuttle mission in 2008