The European Space Agency launched its penultimate mission to the International Space Station on Wednesday (June 5), expending great energy to lift a record amount of mass aboard a spacecraft named for the scientist famous for equating the two quantities with the expression "E=mc^2."

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Automated Transfer Vehicle-4 (ATV-4), an unmanned cargo freighter, lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana at 5:52 p.m. EDT (2152 GMT). The second to last of ESA's five planned station resupply spacecraft launched since 2008, ATV-4 was named "Albert Einstein" after the iconic physicist known for the theory of relativity.

Einstein's theorieshave been put to the test in space and his work has guided robotic spacecraft to other planets. ATV-4 is the first spaceship to bear Einstein's name, at the suggestion of the Swiss delegation to the European Space Agency. Einstein was born in Germany but studied and spent his early career in Switzerland.

PHOTOS: Space Station Astronauts Log One Million Photographs

Lifting off from the jungle spaceport along South America's northeast coast, ATV-4 soared spaceward with Europe's largest-ever load of dry cargo for the station. Packed with science experiments, crew supplies, a 3D printed tool box and even copies of Einstein's manuscript explaining the foundation for the general theory of relativity, the craft is destined to dock with the orbiting laboratory on June 15.

Ten Day Trip and Traffic Delays

The Automated Transfer Vehicle, which is about the size of a London double-decker bus with four solar array wings, has on past missions made the same International Space Station (ISS)-bound trip in half the time.

"The nominal duration from launch to docking is five days to 'phase' or synchronize the orbits of ATV and ISS," said ESA's lead mission director Jean-Michel Bois in a blog on ESA's ATV-4 "Albert Einstein" website. "These five days are a compromise between various constraints, mainly to minimize the propellant consumption."

Doubling the transfer time for this mission is a combination of traffic on the ground and in space.

"At the beginning, we need to free the Kourou preparation rooms and launch pad as soon as possible to allow launch of numerous other satellites in the year," explained Bois. "With three launchers (Ariane, the Soyuz launcher and Vega), the Kourou logistic situation is complex!"

View post:

Einstein's Space Station Cargo Ship Launches