Once Upon a Time There Was the ATV: How ESA (Re)Considers a Cargo Capsule and Astronaut Transportation

A competition among private companies to develop a resupply vehicle for the ISS, reusable and which could evolve into the first European shuttle for astronauts. From the Space summit in Seville, a story already heard.

BY EMILIO COZZI

The European Space Agency will develop vehicles for transporting supplies to (and from) the International Space Station. This was decided at the Space summit in Seville, where the ministers of the ESA member countries have established to launch a continental competition for the cargo service provision to start by 2028. The vehicle could evolve into a shuttle for crew transport, which Europe has never had. It seems like a story we’ve heard before. And it is.

The year 2008. On March 9th, the Ariane 5 rocket detaches from the launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana. It carries the ATV 001 Jules Verne capsule. ESA celebrates a historic moment: “For the first time in forty years of space activities, a revolution is happening at the European launch site of Kourou.” Jules Verne is “the first human-rated vehicle” to be launched from the European spaceport. It carried only supplies of fuel, oxygen, water, but it is worth remembering: Europe had developed a means capable of transporting people beyond the atmosphere. Regrettably, today we know well it would never happen.

Once upon a time there was the ATV, one might say. Difficult, for those outside the sector or simply not passionate enough to even remember the meaning of the acronym: the ATV, or Automated Transfer Vehicle, was the the cargo capsule through which, for a period, the European Space Agency provided a cargo transport service to the International Space Station. Three times more capacious than its Russian “colleague” Progress, it could carry up to seven and a half tons of materials, experiments, food, water, and assorted supplies to the orbiting laboratory. A gem whose pressurized space was, moreover, built in Italy, at the Thales Alenia Space facilities. The use of the past tense in the previous lines is necessary: before its retirement, there were five ATV missions, each named after a giant of knowledge: Jules Verne, Johannes Kepler, Edoardo Amaldi, Albert Einstein, Georges Lemaître. A detail not to be overlooked: although it was designed for manned use, the ATV was in fact “disposable”. Once its task was completed, loaded with waste, it was deorbited to burn up in the atmosphere and it was not intended to survive re-entry.

What the ATV lacked was a particular quality: with the proper furnishings and internal systems it could have carried astronauts, but it would not have been able to bring them back to Earth because no one had equipped it with a heat shield to withstand re-entry into the atmosphere. In 2009, a contract was signed with Astrium for the development of the Advanced Reentry Vehicle (or ARV), when the head of Human Flight at the Agency was the Italian Simonetta Di Pippo, who intended to capitalize on the experience accumulated with the ATV and was said to be optimistic about seeing it fly by 2018.

All of this never happened.

After the fifth mission (in 2014), the ATV program was shelved among the successes to be proud of. Not without some dissatisfaction (in the corridors of ESA centers, sighs of regret for this story can still be heard). While the ARV was never even born. With hindsight, it’s all too easy to point it out as a missed opportunity for Europe, which had condemned itself to a supporting role, without the ambition to become independent for its astronauts’ access to orbit.

It’s worth emphasizing: it was 2014, three years after the retirement of the Space Shuttle program. The only way for the West to reach orbit would have been to purchase seats from the Russians for a round-trip orbital journey on the Soyuz. It would remain this way for another six years, until May 2020, when SpaceX would return to America and its partners, including Europe and Italy, independent access to space thanks to its Crew Dragons. That is the direct evolution of the Dragon with which Elon Musk’s company became the first private entity to perform cargo transport service for the ISS (and return).

An even more painful resonance with the “missed opportunity” for Europe.

Thus, in 2023, ESA finds itself starting from scratch. The stated goal, for now, is the cargo transport service “which could evolve into a crew vehicle and serve other destinations – other space stations? The Gateway in lunar orbit?, editor’s note -, if the member states so desire.” Meanwhile, there are the 75 million euros already allocated for the first phase, with private financing “to be sought during the competition.” The fate of this new program will then be entrusted to the next Ministerial conference, which will be held at the end of 2025. There, it will be decided how to cross the 2028 finish line, and therefore to continue in partnership with the private sector, it is clear. But also whether to finance further developments of the future shuttle. It is nice to think that at the end of the (long) process, we may witness the first Europeans taking off towards the stars from the Kourou spaceport.

Just a year ago, the French Arianegroup presented the project for a new transport capsule. Susie (Smart Upper Stage for Innovative Exploration), as it is called, is designed to fly atop the new Ariane 64 rocket, as an extension of it, in place of the payload fairing. And it is already conceived as both a cargo module and a vessel to transport human crews. Designed to be reusable, Susie will return to Earth vertically with retro-rockets and with significant capacity: 40 cubic meters of space and seven tons of payload capacity (like the ATV), much more than what is allowed by Dragon and Orion.

The competition to shape the first European astronaut transport shuttle may have already begun. Or, if one wanted to be cynical, it may have already ended.