* Astronomy

Europe's next space freighter - Johannes Kepler - is being built for a mission to re-supply the space station in 2010.

"It's clear from space history that often it was not the prototype that experienced the problems; it was the mission that came later. That's why specific attention has to be paid to what we do now" - Nico Dettmann is in charge of producing the European Space Agency's (Esa) next space freighter.

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Europe to study freighter upgrade
The European Space Agency is about to look in detail at how it might upgrade its space station freighter so it can return cargo safely to Earth.
At the moment, the Automated Transfer Vehicle is discarded after delivering supplies to the orbiting platform.
The agency will ask industry in the coming weeks to define the requirements for a far more capable ship.

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"Now that the European Space Agencys Jules Verne cargo carrier is parked 2000 km in front of the International Space Station, observers have a good opportunity to see both spacecraft in the evening sky" - amateur astronomer Till Credner.

On March 19th, 2008, he photographed the pair streaking over Hohenzollern Castle in southern Germany: The Jules Verne appears about four and a half minutes before the ISS and they follow the same track across the sky. Jules Verne vanishes in the east just as the ISS appears in the west.

Building on the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) in the new scenario the pressurised Integrated Cargo Carrier would be replaced by a cargo re-entry capsule, equipped with a heat shield and able to bring back hundreds of kilograms of cargo and valuable experiments. Such a project, named the Advanced Re-entry Vehicle (ARV), would use heritage from the Atmospheric Re-entry Demonstrator (ARD), which flew successfully in 1998, as well as the work done in the definition of past space transportation system concepts.
Credits: ESA TV.