Artist's impression showing ATV docking with ISS

Almost there! Artist's impression showing ATV docking with ISS Credit: ESA - D.Ducros

Today’s second set of mid-course manoeuvres took place as planned starting at 16:59 CET. ATV Johannes Kepler is now at 277 km altitude and 357 km behind the ISS. The extension of the docking probe was completed successfully. The day’s usual in-flight maintenance operations were performed by the mission operations team, including rotation of the solar arrays (to remove any pollution on the contacts between the solar arrays and the power distribution system) and a refuelling system test.

The first ISS approach manoeuvres will take place in three stages today and tomorrow morning to bring ATV to an average altitude of about 320 km, then 340 km and finally 350 km, more or less at the height of the Station.

The first point of initialisation of the automatic docking sequence – Waypoint S-1/2 (about 40 km behind the station and 5 km below) – will be reached at 12:37 CET. The docking time has been updated very slightly, and is now forecast at 16:47:30 CET.