The Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV-5) George Lemaitre is set to launch on July 29, 2014, from the French and European Arianespace Guiana Space Centre (Centre spatial guyanais, CSG) near Kourou in French Guiana.
The European Space Agency (ESA) will launch its fifth and final ATV cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS).
The launch is scheduled to occur at 7:44 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on Tuesday, July 29; 8:44 p.m. local time in Kourou, French Guiana; 23:44 UTC; 1:44 a.m. in Paris, France; and 3:44 a.m. in Moscow, Russia (on July 30).
The ATV-5 spacecraft will be launched by an Ariane 5 ES rocket, sending over 7 tons of supplies and cargo to the Expedition crew onboard the International Space Station. The Ariannespace mission is called Flight VA219.
The 14-ton spacecraft is named George Lemaitre (1894-1966) in honor of the Belgian astronomer and physicist who proposed the theory of the expansion of the universe.
Lemaitre was also a Belgian Roman Catholic priest and a professor of physics at the French section of the Catholic University of Louvain.
Lemaitre also proposed what became known as the big bang theory of the origin of the universe, which he called his “hypothesis of the primeval atom or the ‘Cosmic Egg’.”
The ATV-5 spacecraft will take 14 days to arrive at the ISS. It will then dock to the aft port of the Russian Zvezda service module.
Docking is scheduled for 9:34 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, August 12, 2014. The spacecraft will remain at the ISS until late January 2015.
To watch the liftoff of the George Lemaitre spacecraft, go to NASA TV. NASA TV coverage of the launch will begin at 7:15 p.m. EDT and include commentary from both NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, U.S.A. and ESA’s launch provider, Arianespace (http://www.arianespace.com/index/index.asp).
By David Swan