Access an animation showing, roughly, what a CAM looks like on the ESA portal (link below). -- Daniel

"Upon detection of a critical failure or an unsafe situation, the Monitoring and Safing Unit (MSU) isolates the ATV’s nominal system and commands a Collision Avoidance Manoeuvre (CAM). This brings the ATV on a safe trajectory within the monitoring corridor towards the ISS. Once the Collision Avoidance Manoeuvre is completed, the MSU points the vehicle towards the Sun, thus ensuring sufficient power from the solar panels during the ‘survival’ mode that the vehicle enters." 

CAM animation 

The news is in: This morning's CAM (Collision Avoidance Manoeuvre) demonstration went 'flawlessly', as described by John Ellwood, ESA's ATV project manager. Maria and I spoke with Alberto Novelli, ESA's Mission Director at ATV-CC, about an hour after the demonstration, and he was just delighted with the results. He explained there was some stress before the manoeuvre, but that everything went well and that the team continues to be really pleased with the spacecraft, which continues to perform even better than expected (more details including mp3 audio file after the jump). -- Daniel

 Full story »