There’s a great photo posted earlier today showing ESA astronaut André Kuipers training in Russia for his upcoming PromISSe mission – he was in the mock-up of the Zvezda module of the ISS.

Via Twitter @astro_andre wrote (via Yfrog): “ISS training on installing equipment for communicating with ESA’s ATV cargo ship. 40 cables. Imagine floating…”

Prior to the docking of each ATV, the crew — in this case, Astro André — must install and configure the proximity link radio (PCE) inside the Zvezda module. It communicates by radio via two antennas mounted on the outside of the ISS with the two similar antennas mounted on ATV, one directly on the side of the vessel and another on a deployable boom. The 55-kg PCE unit mounted inside the Zvezda module arrived in space via a Progress resupply mission in March 2005.

The PCE is part of the direct radio link between the ISS and ATV and is required for the final phase of the rendezvous and docking. It is through this interface that the ISS crew can quickly react to unexpected deviations from the nominal rendezvous and docking approach by issuing a radio command to ATV – to hold, perform an escape or abort the docking.

More details on how the proximity radio link is also used as a backup telecommand link for ATV via “ESA ground stations communicate with ISS”