A picture is worth a thousand words: and this update from Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who just finished ATV training at ESA’s European Astronaut Centre, shows the buttons that enable the crew to intervene if anything goes wrong during docking.

During the final approach to docking, two astronauts on board the ISS will monitor docking closely, ready to issue commands to ATV to HOLD, RETREAT, ESCAPE or ABORT if anything goes wrong. For this, they will use the control box – the panel enables 16 different commands – located in the Russian Zvezda ISS module.

Click for more details on the ATV control panel.