European Space Freighter cleared to dock with ISS: ESA

Europe's brand-new robot space freighter received final clearance to dock with the International Space Station (ISS), officials at the European Space Agency announced Wednesday.

The Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), named the Jules Verne after the French pioneer of science fiction, will make its first attempt to link up to the orbiting space station on Thursday at 1441 GMT, said ESA management.

"We have proven that Jules Verne's systems are safe, reliable and ready to dock to the Station," said John Ellwood, the ATV's project manager.

"Everyone has worked very hard to get to this point, and we have also proven that the team on the ground is fully ready for tomorrow's first attempt," he added.

ESA mission control in Toulouse, southwestern France, put the vehicle through two test runs, one on Saturday, the other Monday, which passed off without a hitch.

If Thursday's first attempt at docking does not succeed then the ESA has pencilled in a second attempt for Saturday.

The Jules Verne is a freighter weighing nearly 20 tonnes. Launched on March 9, it is designed to dock automatically with the Russian-made module Zvezda, one of the earliest components of the ISS, an orbital outpost in space.

It carries 7.5 tonnes of water, food and other essentials.

Designing and building it has cost ESA 1.3 billion euros (2.01 billion dollars). Four more ATV cargo ships are in the works, with their assembly and launch each costing just over 300 million euros.

Mastering automatic-docking technology is considered a key to assembling spaceships in orbit for long-term missions, such as to Mars.

The rendezvous and docking will be broadcast live by ESA TV, 16:00-17:15 CEST (14:00-15:15 UT); details are available on the ESA TV web page. The event will also be streamed live via the ESA website starting at 16:00 CEST (14:00 UT); the link will be made available shortly before.

European vessel to dock with space station

PARIS - A European supply vessel carrying over five tons of freight is scheduled to dock with the international space station on Thursday in a major advance for Europe's space program. Officials of the European Space Agency said the docking of Europe's first Automated Transfer Vehicle was slated for 10:41 ET when it should ease into place without any intervention from astronauts in the space station. Dubbed "Jules Verne" in honor of the visionary 19th century French science fiction writer, officials are counting on the ATV program, in which $2 billion has been invested so far, to open the way to further European space exploration.

Philosophy of space and time

Philosophy of space and time is the branch of philosophy concerned with the issues surrounding the ontology, epistemology, and character of space and time. While such ideas have been central to philosophy from its inception, the philosophy of space and time was both an inspiration for and a central aspect of early analytic philosophy. The subject focuses on a number of basic issues, including—but not limited to—whether or not time and space exist independently of the mind, whether they exist independently of one another, what accounts for time's apparently unidirectional flow, whether times other than the present moment exist, and questions about the nature of identity (particularly the nature of identity over time).