(Picture, credit ESA)
NEWS ROOM: - Engagement perfect! At 17:08 hours today, 24 February 2011 the Italian Johannes Kepler ATV-2, the second copy of the shuttle the European ATV (Automated Transfer Vehicle), was attached to the form Zvedza the International Space Station after a trip started last Thursday by the European spaceport in Kourou in French Guyana .
The approach and docking of the ATV-2 occurred automatically, although monitored by the Control Centre in Toulouse and by astronauts aboard the station.
Below you have the video of the docking
great satisfaction in ESA where Simonetta di Pippo, Director for Human Spaceflight, said that with the docking of today "... Johannes Kepler proves to be a great example of the wave of innovation 'made in Europe'. We are ready as ever to enter an era of autonomy in ' space exploration. Thanks to its flexibility, we can think of a great variety of new spacecraft. ATV could evolve into a vehicle space can return to Earth [see here] to support future exploration missions and orbital infrastructure, transporting people and supplies into orbit ...".
In the next hours the astronauts aboard the ISS will open the door of ATV-2 and enter inside to "take over" the station and load 1760 kg of supplies (including food, clothes and various equipment.) will be pumped to 860 kg and 100 kg of propellant oxygen tanks inside the Zvezda module.
And after Japanese HTV-2, ATV-2 Europe is now the turn of the Americano Space Shuttle Discovery STS-133 , leaving tonight at 22:50 (eng) from NASA Kennedy Space Center.
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