Update: deadline is set for when ATV-4 reenters our atmosphere Saturday ~noon GMT. For people who cannot see Gravity yet: guess! (Hint: it is not the answer most people are giving.)
The film Gravity features a short role for our very own ATV spacecraft. This is not the first time ATV has ‘starred’ in a Hollywood movie; the spacecraft’s acting career was launched by Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Of course ATV has also featured in many other videos including documentaries, educational videos, music videos (more music videos…) and newsclips.
Scene from Gravity. Credits: Warner Bros
So, while we wait for ATV Albert Einstein’s reentry this Saturday, another film-based competition is in order:
Which ATV appears in the film Gravity? Was it ATV-1, 2, 3, 4 or 5?
Enter your answer in the comments of this blog post including a short description of what you think the frog (seen at the end of the film) symbolises?
Naming the correct ATV spacecraft and supplying the best/funniest answer to the second question will earn you an official ATV rucksack. We have goodies for two runners up, too!
Editor’s note: This competition is unofficial and not coordinated with the producers of Gravity. We do not endorse this nor any other film, but it’s pretty darn entertaining! See the science behind Gravity.
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Discussion: 35 comments
The ATV is ATV-5,. I think frog maybe related to idea of evolution of the species.
Its the L’ATV-CC and the frog Prince WHO is waiting his kiss , he is also searching in space and the universe
to find the right 🙂
atv 4 , and I think the frog represents ,ONE GIANT LEAP !
Well, I guess it´s the 5th – Frog because it makes a lot of noise before it “leaps” and you never know where it lands (if anything of it ever makes it back…). ^^
It has to be ATV-5. The frog might be a symbol for doing what you can, humans are made for walking so you should walk, frogs can swim so they swim.
The ATV which appears in Gravity is ATV5 because Doctor Stone drives a Soyuz TMA-14M which is planned to be launched in 2014. You can also see Nauka Module, which is going to be sent by late 2014.
The frog maybe represents that Doctor Stone has landed in a hostile zone, maybe North Korea.
The ATV is ATV 4 Albert Einstein.
I think the frog shows the abundance of earthly life unlike space. It can also represent the famous photo of the Flying Frog at the takeoff of LADEE.
I think that it was ATV – 4. And about the frog? I think it symbolises evolution. A frog goes by and Sandra Bullock is able to get out. She has no evolved from a basic animal, to an amphibian, and then she swims on to shore – being re-born. Then for the last shot…she’s a fully evolved human, standing strong on the land.
I think it was ATV-4 and the frog symbolizes peaceful life underwater and holding your breath.
The ATV is Albert Einstein Vehicle (ATV4)
the frog goes by (one of the most evolved animals) and she is able to get out. She has no evolved from a basic animal, to an amphibian, and then she swims on to shore – being re-born.The film also portrays images of how unnatural space is to humans, or just how unnatural everything is to human condition.This is shown beautifully with the scene in the water with Bullock and the frog gracefully swimming, as man struggles to survive, this basic, simple creature gracefully floats through its habitat
The ATV It’s ATV-3. And the explanation for the frog is the following one:
-Right after astronaut Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) ejected from the Chinese Space Station with the scape capsule, the nuclear cores providing energy to the Chinese Space Station exploded opening an inter-dimensional portal for which the scape capsule passed through. When the capsule landed, it didn’t really landed on Earth, but on the planet Frog-iano. An Earth-alike planet not yet visited by humans where the “Frogians”: supper intelligent beings enclosed in the body of tiny frogs lived. The frog at the end of the movie represented the first “Human”-“Frogian”encounter ever!!!!! 🙂
Since Gravity takes place in the near future, that ATV should be the fifth (ATV-5 “Georges Lemaître”). Frogs are Amphibian, i.e. they live in water and land, but they cannot live underwater for long time, they need to breathe air. Humans can live in space – just like frogs in water – , but they need the air and land Earth provides.
The ATV is ATV-5 “George Lemaître”. In the movie, it is docked to the ISS along with a Soyuz identified by Ryan (when she tries to radio Houston of her intent to get to Tiangong) as “Soyuz TMA-14M”. The latter Soyuz exists and will be launched to the ISS in September 2014, suggesting an ATV docked in the second half of 2014. In June 2014, ATV-5 will be launched. So the timetable matches.
And then the frog… Ryan (Bullock) is escaping from the sinking Chinese Shenzou reentry module when the frog appears, so it seems logic to me to look for a meaning in Chinese culture.
In Chinese Feng-Shui, frogs or toads stand for immortality and good news. Given that Bullock has just survived an ordeal no ordinary human would survive, this fits quite well.
In Chinese Feng Shui, frogs/toads (Jin Chan the Money frog) also stand for a guaranteed money flow. Given the success of ‘Gravity’ in the Box Office, I bet that will come true for Bullock as well… 😉
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Hello!
It is ATV 5.
We can see at the beginning of the film, the astonishing landscape of the universe and planet earth, how we are doing the first steps to explore the space from the earth, as well as the evolution did the first steps to explore the earth from the water. It’s just beautiful to see the analogy between them 🙂
ATV-4 A. Einstein. The frog symbolises the return Home, the co-existance with other species, our cellular origins and the posibility of Life evolving in different environments.
ATV4 Albert Einstein
I think that the frog refers to the movement astronauts do in space – that there is a spieces on the Earth that is acting like in the space. The whole scene with drowning and swimming looks like a “copy” of the movement at ISS. It’s like “you think you are back? not yet, you are still in “the universe”.
But my first thoughts when watching the movie were like “What the hell, a FROG? WHAT?!”. It was really funny scene as well as the flying cartoon roman soldier.
It’s ATV-4 (Albert Einstein) and the frog at the end symbolises the ability to survive in a new environment as the first frog did when it left the water and the capability to substain live in two “worlds”.
ATV-4! Q: The frog could have been a symbol for Matt Kowalsky, who left his own live in order to save hers and now he is guiding her through the water back to safety
ATV-4 Albert Einstein. The Frog symbolises a connection between the air, the water and the ground – is it a prospective astronaut candidate?! 😀
It´s ATV-5.
What I thought the frog symbolized is the origins, evolution and progress of humankind. All life comes from water, and the frog symbolized the amphibians that took that step from water to a terrestrial habitat.
It´s a metaphor to compare it to astronauts: they´re the ones exploring outside of their natural habitat, like the frog 🙂
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ATV – 5; The frog is of course symbolizing the “giant leap” for mankind..
It have to be ATV-3 Edoardi Emaldi since ATV-4 is juist released from the iss
Atv is ATV1
the frog. this is the evolution of species. Life returns to where it just … water ..
I think that the one showed in Gravity is ATV 3 Edoardo Amaldi, also because the images used to make the movie cannot be very new, and considerating also that ATV 5 has not been launched yet!
My interpretation of the final (poetic) scene of the movie is this:
Astronaut Ryan doesn’t land in a town, neither in a urbanised area of our Planet.
She lands in a place where life exist in a simple and genuine way, in a place where the Earth is still as it was when first humans were born.
She survived in a really complex adventure at the edge of human technology, but landing on water she risks to die drowning, as a common and wild creature.
Ryan, an human creature, swims to save herself in the same, exact way the frog swimmed just before.
Their swimstyle, for a moment, appears so similar, so basic.
In that moment we understand that at the end we are all creatures of Earth.
Humans are so complex, so elaborated.
But, at the same time, they are so simple, so similar to other creatures.
Humans still have a lot in common with their planet mates, like the swimming frog symbolizes.
Humans can go very far, they can both build magnificient things and destroy them, they can live in hubrys, but they can’t forget their origins.
Because we, as Humans, carry them in ourselves.
And this is wonderful.
This how I interpretated the final scene!
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Could be ATV-5 because it will be docked to the ISS during the Soyuz TMA-14M, mentioned in the movie. But there is a Space Shuttle too, and those were retired 2 years ago, and a Chinese station that will be orbited 8 years after ATV-5. So, I don’t think it’s relevant what other space objects are shown. I think it’s an imaginary ATV modeled from ATV-4, as the STS-157 is an imaginary mission too. The frog symbolizes the transformation and the “rebirth” of Stone after the near death experience.
this is ATV-4
Frog actually part of a larger sequence shot … All debute when she leaves the scafandre simbolise that the emergence of life, then see algae, finally animals with the famous frog. Rempe then out of the water as the first fish that are also out, then it has the posture of primates, then straightens as Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) is the beginning of humanity. A beautiful hymn to life …
ATV 2 Johannes Kepler (considering the time they started making the movie).
The frog symbolizes Stone’s rebirth: the frog is swimming to the surface, just like Stone is about to. She stopped living when her daughter died, and now that she survived and is back on Earth, she overcame her child’s death and can start a new life.
Also, the frog is the first living being we see when Stone arrives on Earth, and since it’s a tiny form of life it opposes the vastness of space.
ATV 5
I have not seen the film, but my guess is that it’s ATV-2
And the frog symbolises one small step for Jeffrey the frog, one giant leap for frog-kind (see what I did there with the ‘leap’?)
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ATV-4. The frog is just a freaky cooincidence from when NASA launched the LADEE mission, and a poor frog got fried in the intial thrust blast. I suppose you could say it was foreshadowing! 😉
Paolo did take some pretty pictures of ATV-2 when he left the Station to return to Earth… Movie footage too, if I remember well.
As to the frog, seriously, I think it photobombed the shot (would not be the first time…), and the team decided to keep it as a clever metaphor of evolution after inhaling too little oxygen during the filming…
Thank you ESA team 🙂 Had fun reading everyone’s comments