Unloading the containers from the canal barge at Rotterdam harbour.
Credit: ESA.
The Integrated Cargo Carrier (ICC) Pressurized Module, the cylinder section where astronauts will be able to work when the ATV is docked to the ISS, has arrived in its container at the EADS SPACE Transportation facility in Bremen on board the Beluga Airbus aircraft in Oktober 2003. The Jules Verne ICC Pressurized Module flight hardware was integrated in Turin (I) by Alenia Spazio.
ESA Astronaut Jean-François Clervoy inside the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) test model at ESA's test facilities in The Netherlands.
ATV Integrated Cargo Carrier Pressurized Module is removed from its container after arriving in Bremen.
Flight Simulation Facility (FSF) in Les Mureaux, France.
The thermal-vacuum test simulates the extreme conditions the ATV will experience in orbit. Xenon high-intensity discharge lamps (the blue honeycomb structures in the picture) are used to achieve the required solar radiation in an otherwise empty room under vacuum conditions. The ATV and its components can thus be tested in circumstances approaching those in space.
On the 120-tonne mobile platform (to the right), a set of passive rendezvous targets (retroreflectors), identical to the ones installed on the ISS, are facing the sensors mounted on an articulated industrial robotic arm (left). The relative motion achieved between the two is identical to the one expected 2008 rendezvous between Jules Verne and ISS.
The ATV, which consists of the Equipped Propulsion Bay and the Equipped Avionics Bay also had to be reassembled at Kourou space centre.