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Launches

By Staff Writer | January 14, 2008

      Ariane 5 Begins Fueling Automated Transfer Vehicle For Cargo Mission To Space Station, In New Supply Role

      Fueling has begun for the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) that an Ariane 5 booster in the middle of next month will loft into orbit on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS), Arianespace announced.

      The ATV will become a key re-supply vehicle for the ISS, Arianespace noted.

      That automated spaceship will carry equipment, systems, food, water, and propellant to the ISS. The Arianespace launch manifest includes a total of nine ATV missions, which will be performed using the Ariane 5 rocket.

      Currently, a huge amount of supplies are carried to the space station, and unneeded items are offloaded from the ISS and brought back to Earth, aboard the gigantic U.S. space shuttle.

      However, the shuttles are mandated to cease flying Sept. 30, 2010, and the replacement U.S. spaceship won’t begin manned flights until 2015, a half-decade gap when the United States — the nation that placed men on the moon — won’t have a space flight capability.

      Rather, NASA will have to depend on other nations or private commercial space companies to transport astronauts and supplies to the space station.

      The ATV fueling is being performed in the S5B fueling hall of the S5 payload preparation building at the European spaceport in French Guiana, South America. This procedure will include loading the ATV with two sets of propellants.

      In space missions, the four ATV main engines will utilize MMH fuel and MON oxidizer to propel the massive spacecraft to a rendezvous with the space station following the ATV release by Ariane 5.

      Also carried aboard the ATV are UDMH and N204 hypergolic propellants, which are to be delivered to the ISS for use by its own Russian-built propulsion module.

      With an overall height of approximately 10 meters, the ATV will be one of the largest single payloads carried by Ariane 5. It was developed in a European Space Agency program and built by an Astrium-led industrial team.

      The ATV is named "Jules Verne" after the 19th century French science fiction writer.

      Launch Schedule

      2008 Launches

      Date: Feb. 7 +

      Mission: STS-122

      Launch Vehicle: Space Shuttle Atlantis

      Launch Site: Kennedy Space Center – Launch Pad 39A

      Launch Time: 2:47 p.m. EST

      Description: STS-122 will deliver the Columbus European Laboratory Module and will be the twenty-fourth mission to the International Space Station.

      Date: Mid-March +

      Mission: STS-123

      Launch Vehicle: Space Shuttle Endeavour

      Launch Site: Kennedy Space Center – Launch Pad 39A

      Description: Mission STS-123 on Space Shuttle Endeavour will deliver the pressurized section of the Kibo Japanese Experiment Logistics Module (ELM-PS) on the twenty-fifth mission to the International Space Station.

      Date: April 17 *

      Mission: STSS ATRR – Missile Defense Agency

      Launch Vehicle: United Launch Alliance Delta II

      Launch Site: Vandenberg Air Force Base – Launch Pad SLC-2

      Description: STSS ATRR serves as a pathfinder for future launch and mission technology for the Missile Defense Agency. To be launched by NASA for the MDA.

      Date: April 24 +

      Mission: STS-124

      Launch Vehicle: Space Shuttle Discovery

      Launch Site: Kennedy Space Center – Launch Pad 39A

      Launch Time: 8:26 a.m. EDT

      Description: Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-124 will transport the Kibo Japanese Experiment Module – Pressurized Module (JEM-PM) and the Japanese Remote Manipulator System (JEM-RMS) to the International Space Station.

      Date: May 16

      Mission: GLAST

      Launch Vehicle: United Launch Alliance Delta II

      Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station – Launch Complex 17 – Pad 17-B

      Launch Window: 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. EDT

      Description: An heir to its successful predecessor — the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory — the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope will have the ability to detect gamma rays in a range of energies from thousands to hundreds of billions of times more energetic than the light visible to the human eye. Radiation of such magnitude can only be generated under the most extreme conditions, thus GLAST will focus on studying the most energetic objects and phenomena in the universe.

      Date: June 15

      Mission: OSTM/Jason 2

      Launch Vehicle: United Launch Alliance Delta II

      Launch Site: Vandenberg Air Force Base – Launch Pad SLC-2

      Description: The Ocean Surface Topography Mission on the Jason-2 satellite will be a follow-on to the Jason mission.

      Date: June 25 +

      Mission: TacSat-3

      Launch Vehicle: Orbital Sciences Minotaur Rocket

      Launch Site: Wallops Flight Facility – Goddard Space Flight Center

      Description: NASA will support the Air Force launch of the TacSat-3 satellite, managed by the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Space Vehicles Directorate. TacSat-3 will demonstrate the capability to furnish real-time data to the combatant commander. NASA Ames will fly a microsat and NASA Wallops will fly the CubeSats on this flight in addition to providing the launch range.

      Date: July 15

      Mission: IBEX

      Launch Vehicle: Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL Rocket

      Launch Site: Reagan Test Site, Kwajalein Atoll

      Description: IBEX’s science objective is to discover the global interaction between the solar wind and the interstellar medium and will achieve this objective by taking a set of global energetic neutral atom images that will answer four fundamental science questions.

      Date: July 16 *

      Mission: STSS Demonstrators Program – Missile Defense Agency

      Launch Vehicle: United Launch Alliance Delta II

      Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station – Launch Complex 17, Pad A

      Description: STSS Demonstrators Program is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator and is part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors and interceptors. To be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency.

      Date: July 20 *

      Mission: GOES-O

      Launch Vehicle: United Launch Alliance Delta IV

      Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station – Launch Complex 17

      Description: NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are actively engaged in a cooperative program, the multimission Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite series N-P. This series will be a vital contributor to weather, solar and space operations, and science.

      Date: Aug. 7 *

      Mission: STS-125

      Launch Vehicle: Space Shuttle Atlantis

      Launch Site: Kennedy Space Center – Launch Pad 39A

      Launch Time: 8:24 a.m. EDT

      Description: Space Shuttle Atlantis will fly seven astronauts into space for the fifth and final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. During the 11-day flight, the crew will repair and improve the observatory’s capabilities through 2013.

      Date: Sept. 18 +

      Mission: STS-126

      Launch Vehicle: Space Shuttle Endeavour

      Launch Site: Kennedy Space Center – Launch Pad 39A

      Launch Time: 8:08 p.m. EDT

      Description: Space Shuttle Endeavour launching on assembly flight ULF2, will deliver a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module to the International Space Station.

      Date: Oct. 28

      Mission: LRO/LCROSS

      Launch Vehicle: United Launch Alliance Atlas V

      Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station – Launch Complex 41

      Description: The mission objectives of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite are to advance the Vision for Space Exploration by confirming the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at either the Moon’s North or South Pole.

      Date: Dec. 1 *

      Mission: SDO

      Launch Vehicle: United Launch Alliance Atlas V

      Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station – Launch Complex 41

      Description: The first Space Weather Research Network mission in the Living With a Star (LWS) Program of NASA.

      Date: Dec.15

      Mission: OCO

      Launch Vehicle: Orbital Sciences Taurus Rocket

      Launch Site: Vandenberg Air Force Base – Launch Pad SLC 576-E

      Description: The Orbiting Carbon Observatory is a new Earth orbiting mission sponsored by NASA’s Earth System Science Pathfinder Program.

      2009 Launches

      Date: Feb. 16

      Mission: Kepler

      Launch Vehicle: United Launch Alliance Delta II

      Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station – Launch Complex 17 – Pad 17-B

      Description: The Kepler Mission, a NASA Discovery mission, is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to detect and characterize hundreds of Earth- size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone.

      Date: March 1

      Mission: Glory

      Launch Vehicle: Orbital Sciences Taurus Rocket

      Launch Site: Vandenberg Air Force Base – Launch Pad SLC 576-E

      Description: The Glory Mission will help increase our understanding of the Earth’s energy balance by collecting data on the properties of aerosols and black carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere and how the Sun’s irradiance affects the Earth’s climate.