The Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), the European Space Agency's (ESA) latest contribution to the International Space Station (ISS), was launched at 10:03 PM CST last night. The ATV is an unmanned cargo vehicle that we will use to resupply the ISS with propellant, food, clothing, and other things. ATV is designed, engineered, and controlled by French aerospace companies working with ESA. This is the first time ESA has ever launched and controlled their own spacecraft in coordination with a manned space vehicle program. While no space mission is flawless, ATV continues to remain in orbit working towards a docking date with ISS on April 3.
In honor of the big event, Lauri and I threw an ATV Launch party, with a French theme of course. We had cheese and crackers, roasted garlic dip, fruit, eclairs, some cookies imported from France, some French wine, and some Champagne to top it all off. We had over most of the ATV team from my group at NASA, and we all had a blast (pun intended) watching the Launch.
Note from Lauri: Just FYI, ATV is the reason Jeff and I went to France in October of '06. Yay for ATV!
Here are the pictures from last night:
2 comments:
Lauri,
I know you are busy with the shower for Sat. Wish I could be in Texas for the fun event but I'm lucky to come back to Texas for the wedding. Please do me a favor,after the shower could you send me a CD disk of the shower pictures so I can make a scrapbook for Carrie all about the shower? I won't be sending a gift to the shower but later I'll send the album to Carrie.Thanks so much for including me with the invitation...I'll put that in the album too! Miss you both. Looks like you had a good time at the French party...ha! Love, Aunt Sherry
Looks like fun!
-M
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