European Spacecraft Scheduled For Saturday Launch

European Spacecraft
Scheduled For Saturday Launch
To International Space Station
Saturday, March 08, 2008......

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WenatcheWworld.com brings us this report and it starts off like this... On Saturday night, a European spacecraft is scheduled to blast off from French Guiana on its maiden voyage to the international space station, giving NASA and the world a new way to reach the orbiting laboratory... For NASA, however, the launch of the Jules Verne also highlights a stark reality: In 2 ½ years, just as the station gets fully assembled, the United States will no longer have any spacecraft of its own capable of carrying astronauts and cargo up to the completed station, in which roughly $100 billion is being invested. The three space shuttles will be retired by then — due to their high cost and questionable safety — and NASA will have nothing ready to replace them until 2015 at the earliest...
Be sure to click this news article out at link below...
For NASA, a 5-year timeout in space race
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NASA.gov website has this report and it goes in part like this...
The Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) is a 22-ton unmanned cargo carrier that will ferry almost 8 tons of equipment and spare parts as well as food, air, water and Russian resupply fuel to the station. It will use its thrusters to control the attitude of the space station and its main engines to reboost it.

The first ATV launch is set for March 8, 2008, from ESA’s Arianespace launch site in Kourou, French Guiana, along the northern coast of South America. The Jules Verne will ride atop an Ariane 5 rocket, the largest payload ever carried by that rocket.

Read article in full HERE

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About Photo: The Ariane 5 ES-ATV launcher, on its mobile launch table, shortly after its transfer from the Final Assembly Building (BAF) at the Launch Zone (ZL-3) of Ariane Launch Complex no.3 (ELA-3) at the Guiana Space Centre, Europe's Spaceport, on 7 March 2008, for fuelling and final launch preparation. Also visible are two of the four 100-m-tall lightning towers surrounding the launch pad.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja 2008
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Watch the ATV Launch LIVE
and get the latest updates at...
the ATV Blog
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About Photo: Jules Verne, the first of the European Space Agency’s Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATV), a new series of autonomous spaceships designed to re-supply and re-boost the International Space Station (ISS), was successfully launched into low Earth orbit by an Ariane 5 vehicle...
Read the story HERE

Photo Credit: ESA