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Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have a St. Patrick’s Day hunt on their hands as they zip through space more than 200 miles above Earth.
While shuttle Endeavour spacewalkers Rick Linnehan and Robert Behnken add a tool belt to a massive robotic handyman outside the station tonight, another hulking robot – the European Space Agency’s unmanned cargo ship Jules Verne – is hovering just above the Earth’s horizon some 1,200 miles (2,000 km) away from the ISS. The spacecraft is Europe’s first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV).
“Got the feeling that you’re being followed?” Mission Control asked the Endeavour crew in their morning mail this afternoon. “There may be something to that. ATV has been steadily chasing you around the globe and sometime today should be above the horizon off the station’s nose (opposite the velocity vector) today.
“A free green beverage, of your choice from the galley, to the first to identify the bright star rising in the west. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.”
An illustration of Europe’s first ATV cargo ship Jules Verne. Credit: ESA/D.Ducros
Europe’s Jules Verne ATV is a massive 21-ton cargo ship that launched March 8 on a weeks-long shakedown crew to test its automated flight systems.
The spacecraft launched atop a modified Ariane 5 rocket and is designed to haul three times the cargo of Russia’s unmanned Progress freighters to the ISS. Like Progress, Jules Verne is designed to dock at the station’s Russian-built berths and be discarded after about six months. But the solar powered space truck is immense and about the size of London double decker bus.
Click here for live space shuttle mission coverage.
