"John Doe" a écrit dans le message de news:
...
full article at
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles...-esas-atv.html

The European Space Agency's first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) will
begin its programme's four-month long qualification process in April,
which will help

Acually, ATV qualification has been on-going from quite some time now. It
was already underway last summer.

to answer NASA's questions about International Space Station (ISS) safety
and

Also a process which has been ongoing for more than a year.

the potential for commercial ATV cargo supply.


NASA has some tough questions and it is felt the July 25 launch date will
have to be delayed.

July launch has been known to be overly optimistic for quite some time.

Try October or November, IMO.... if all goes well.


Has Kurs gone through similar USA study/approval before ?

Kurs was completely redesigned by the russians for the ATV. The electronics
are completely different.

OTOH, NASA asked also some very difficult questions ( as in, it's difficult
to get the answer from the russians ) about completely recurent componants,
which have flown for decades ( like ADA ). Sometime, it feels like NASA is
using ATV to get knowledge on Progress and Soyouz ( or to discover what NASA
should have done with these in contingency cases ).