Fuel loading complete

Today’s post contributed by Charlotte Beskow from the ATV team – Ed.

Fuel loading has finished in Kourou and teams are now busy with the last preparations for the final phase of the launch campaign, the POC (Plan d’Operations Combinées – so called as it involves combined work by teams from all organisations involved in ATV-5 launch – Arianespace, CNES, Airbus D&S, ESA – on the rocket and the payload – Ed. ).

This phase involves moving ATV-5 to the BAF (Batiment Assemblage Finale) in Kourou, placing it on top of the Ariane 5 launcher and conducting the final combined pre-launch activities.

The door to the Simulation Control Room at ATV-CC, Toulouse. Credit: ESA

While the teams in Kourou are working in S5B, the ESA/CNES mission control teams in Toulouse are also very busy inside the ATV Control Centre.

Simulation in progress: very serious but with a touch of humour (we have a lot of Spanish members in the various FCT teams)

Tuesday we had our final RDV(Rendezvous) simulation. Contrary to most of the previous ones, this one was without any injected failures. The simulation went smoothly and everybody walked away with smiles on their faces.

On Wednesday morning we (ESA’s Engineering Support Team) had a briefing to check readiness of the team and during the afternoon each one of us worked on our individual preparations: Check of displays, updates of computers with the final version of the manuals, closing of various open anomalies, etc., etc.

Simulation Control Room at ATV-CC. Credit: ESA

In parallel, a telecon was held with the ISS International Partners (the JOWG – Joint Operations Working Group) on the status of the operational change requests and flight rules, which are also being finalised.

Today we are doing the final, final simulation for LEOP – the Launch and Early Orbit Phase.

So far everything is running OK.

If all goes well (and there is no reason to suppose it wouldn’t ) then ATV-CC will be ready to freeze the ground systems configuration.

That’s it for now!

– Charlotte