ATV Fuelling Area in Kourou, waiting for Edoardo Amaldi Credit: ESA/C. Beskow

ATV Fuelling Area in Kourou, waiting for Edoardo Amaldi Credit: ESA/C. Beskow

ATV-3 launch -2 months: Day 141 of the Launch Campaign

The first New Year update from ESA’s Charlotte Beskow in Kourou. This post written 5 Jan – Ed.

Post-holiday work restarted at CSG in Kourou on Monday, 2 January.

The ATV teams are already in place and busy preparing for the next big step: fuelling. We have a lot of fuel to load!

  • The fuel ATV needs for its journey to and from the ISS (ca 2200 kg)
  • The propellant to be used by ATV while attached for ISS attitude control and reboost (ca 2500 kg)
  • The fuel that will be transferred to the Russian segment of the ISS (ca 860 kg)

The preparation and loading of this fuel will keep us busy throughout the month of January.

Today some of us completed our safety training for working in the fuelling area. Even though we have all done this training before it is good to get a refresher. In case of problems, you need to react quickly. None are expected, but it is important to be prepared! The fuel is toxic and the operators will wear special suits to protect them. Luckily, I am not one of them.

At the moment the fuelling area is empty (apart from some loading equipment). This will change tomorrow morning (6 January) when we push ATV Edoardo Amaldi, from work area S5C down the corridor and into S5B.

Affaire a suivre, as they say…

– Charlotte