Work underway to plan for ATV-3 departure

“If it reads easy, it wrote hard”

– An old quote from someone

Now that ATV-3’s undocking from Station has been set for tomorrow evening, there is a tremendous amount of work that has to go into planning the departure.

ATV-3 mission management team meeting to prepare for undocking, set for 28 Sep 2012. Credit: ESA

For the original undocking, set for 26 Sep, the teams here had weeks of time to prepare, whereas today, a lot of work has to be squeezed into less than two days.

While ATV undockings always look smooth, there’s a lot that must be done and coordinated – it really is rocket science!

Here’s just a few items I extracted from today’s mission management team meeting:

• Reserve telecommanding time slots on ESA’s Artemis satellite and NASA’s TDRS relay satellite system
• Develop and update the mission plan and detailed timeline, with all actions planned down to the second
• Order meals for the teams working late shifts on console!
• Develop the ATV’s power plan, calculating how much power will be available from Edoardo Amaldi’s solar panels at each phase of free flight (which starts the moment after separation)
• Develop the free-flight orbit plan — where does Amaldi go and when
• Conduct an extensive series of flight dynamics calculations
• Calculate fuel available, estimated usage, contingency reserves, reserves for ATV’s own possible debris avoidance burns once in free flight, etc.
• Work out a plan for firing the ATV thrusters
• Work several minor technical issues in collaboration with the colleagues at MCC-M (Moscow)
• & etc.

There’s much more, and all of it has to be planned, calculated, checked and confirmed. We’re lucky to have an extremely dedicated ‘team of teams’ who make it all look rather easy…

If everything goes according to plan, reentry will remain set for the night of 2/3 October, with impact in a remote region of the Pacific expected around 02:27 CEST on the morning of the 3rd.