Late on Tuesday July 29, Europe launched its last supply ship to the International Space Station (ISS). The Ariane 5 ES rocket was the fifth supply ship launched carrying supplies like food and other supplies necessary for maintenance of the ship, and will be the last, according to the European Space Agency.
The ship, named Georges Lemaître after the father of the Big Bang, launched from a base in Kourou, French Guiana in South America. The ship weighs more than 20 tons, the biggest supply load that the ESA has ever launched into space. Once it reaches orbit, the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) will chart a course to the ISS and is expected to reach it by August 12, where it will attach itself and remain with the space station for several months. Over those months, astronauts aboard the space station will take supplies onboard from the spacecraft. At the end of the dock time, the astronauts will empty their waste, load it onto Lemaitre, and send it back into space.
"The ATV programme is one of the most remarkable space and industrial projects ever made in Europe," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA's Director General in a press release.
The spacecraft will reach the space station for a rendezvous at a height of about 250 miles above the Earth. The ship is carrying about 6.6 tons of supplies for the astronauts: fuel, water, oxygen, food, clothing and scientific experiments. The International Space Station has a crew of six astronauts.
The ATV will also give the astronauts 10 meters (32 feet) of additional living space. It will use its engines to lift the space station, which is losing altitude every day through drag from lingering atmospheric molecules. After six months, the spacecraft will detach from the space station and burn up in a controlled re-entry to Earth.
The space station will continue to receive supply shipments from Russia's Progress freighter, and from Space X and Orbital Sciences, two private firms in the US. Both Space X and Orbital Sciences have contracts with NASA.
What is the Georges Lemaitre carrying to the space station? It has 1,232 articles, including different food items like cheese noodles and 110 pounds of coffee, as well as dental floss and clean clothing for the astronauts to wear, including clothing made from an anti-odor fabric called Spacetex.
The last spacecraft bearing supplies for the ISS docked successfully on July 16, 2014.
