We are really pleased today to share some great news: a downloadable archive of ESA’s ATV blog, spanning the ATV-2 to -5 missions, 2011-2015, is ready to go.

This is Big News for everyone (like us!) who followed the ATV missions.

The Great Library of Alexandria, O. Von Corven, 19th century

“Ancientlibraryalex” by O. Von Corven – Tolzmann, Don Heinrich, Alfred Hessel and Reuben Peiss. The Memory of Mankind. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2001. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ancientlibraryalex.jpg

As you know, we put a great deal of effort into this blog and worked hard to obtain updates from the engineers at the ATV Control Centre, the mission managers, the project team and the extended network of teams from industry and ISS partners involved in the ATV programme. Over the years, the blog developed into a valuable – and, for some types of information, unique – record of what happened at every stage of each mission.

Some of the blog posts refer to activities and events that weren’t recorded in any other public channel, and many include images, comments, quotes or updates from individuals on the ESA and CNES mission team that simply were not captured in any other channel.

The ATV blog archive is a unique record of the real-time drama and excitement that unfolded as Europe’s cargo vessels conducted their ISS resupply missions.

The blog was followed closely by many colleagues in ESA and CNES as well as by external media as it was often the fastest and best way for us to share news of real-time developments, particularly short-notice debris avoidance manoeuvres or minute-to-minute progress of each automated docking.

In fact, the blog archive has been integrated into the official mission archive that the ATV team at Toulouse and ESTEC are compiling as a reference for future programmes.

We hope that current and future generations of spaceflight enthusiasts (aren’t we all?) will find the archive useful and we’d like to thank the team at Atanar Technologies, especially Jean-François Maeyhieux, for the extensive work they put in to create the archive.

Links and full download instructions after the jump.

Direct link to ATV blog archive file (ZIP, 400MB):
https://download.esa.int/esoc/ATV_archive/atv_blog.zip

This ZIP file contains two folders and a readme file; the folders (blogs.esa.int & videos) contain, respectively:

atv_blog.zip
    ├── blog.esa.int == The ATV blog with main index.html that can be browsed locally 
    └── videos 
             ├── videos-youtube.lst    -- youtube videos files list  
             ├── videos-vimeo-references.txt    -- vimeo video list with (html file name):(line number):(video html code)
             ├── videos-youtube-references.txt  -- youtube video list with (html file name):(line number):(video html code)
             ├── player.vimeo.com == vimeo videos files  
             │   ├── 102522975.mp4  
             │   ├── 109815568.mp4  
             │   ├── ......  
             └── www.youtube.com == youtube videos files with their thumbnails  
                 ├── 00sy4WLW16E.jpg  
                 ├── 00sy4WLW16E.mp4  
                 ├── 0g6EgR-uskw.jpg  
                 ├── 0g6EgR-uskw.mp4  
                 ├── .......

 

The ready-to-use archive with the full blog is in the blog.esa.int folder – this can be opened and browsed locally. This archive needs internet access only for external reference and videos.

The videos folder contains all the videos, if you wish to create a version of this archive with locally embedded videos. To create such an archive, you must modify video html tag in the html files referenced by videos-*-references.txt (each line of these files represent: (html file name):(line number):(video html code to modify).

In some cases, certain image thumbnails may not be present; in all cases, the original source image is included.

NOTE: The ATV blog is also indexed and archived by the Internet Time Machine, although this service does not necessarily include embedded images or videos.