Third ATV named after Edoardo Amaldi
The name chosen for the new ESA spacecraft has been announced in Rome and it has been dedicated to the great Italian physicist 16 March 2010
16 Mar 2010
The third ATV (automated transfer vehicle) built by the European Space Agency for the International Space Station has been named after Edoardo Amaldi, the great Italian physicist and pioneer in space science. The new ATV will join Jules Verne, which completed its first mission in 2008, and Johannes Kepler, which will be launched later this year.
The ATV spacecraft are fundamental for the International Space Station’s logistics and operations. Each one can carry up to 4.5 tonnes of food, water, fuel and supplies. The first ATV, Jules Verne, remained docked with the ISS for six months in 2008, also serving as a propulsion module before being undocked and entering the atmosphere over the South Pacific.
The choice of name for the third ATV was announced on 16 March in Rome, during a press conference at the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research, held in the presence of Undersecretary Giuseppe Pizza. “Italy is a key European country in our participation in the ISS partnership,” said Simonetta di Pippo, ESA’s director of human spaceflight. “By naming ATV-3 after Edoardo Amaldi we are celebrating a great Italian, but also a committed European who understood the importance of pooling resources and minds to achieve important results.”
The Italian Space Agency proposed the name of Amaldi (shown in the photo on the right) for the new vehicle. Enrico Saggese, president of the ASI, described how Amaldi started working in the field of nuclear physics with Enrico Fermi, how he did pioneering work in the field of cosmic rays and in the then emerging field of particle physics, consequently becoming a point of reference in Italian physics. Amaldi was among those who, in the post-war years, started the process that led to the founding of the ESRO and then the ESA. Since the 1950s the birth of the visionary concept of a common European effort to explore space is largely due to a certain group of scientists, and Edoardo Amaldi was a leading name among them.