The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
Jules Verne, Europe’s first Automated Transfer Vehicle, ATV, successfully completed a 6-month mission to the ISS in 2008. Launched by an Ariane 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guyana, it delivered 6 tonnes of food, clothing, propellants, water and oxygen.
This flawless mission demonstrated the full range of ATV capabilities, including fully automatic rendezvous and docking with the ISS, four reboosts of the station to a higher orbit to offset atmospheric drag, ISS attitude control, and a special manoeuvre to avoid collision with space debris.
At the end of its mission it was used to offload 2.5 tonnes of waste from the ISS and burned up precisely according to plan during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
The ATV can currently re-supply the ISS with up to 7.5 tonnes of propellant and cargo, and is now the largest orbiting space vehicle after the US Space Shuttle. A second ATV is planned for launch in 2010.
Studies are currently ongoing to modify the ATV to include a cargo re-entry capsule, equipped with a heat shield to bring back hundreds of kilos of cargo and valuable experiments.