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PARIS (Reuters) – An pilotless Ariane herb is scheduled to start a load craft into orbit on Tuesday in Europe's ordinal assignment to carry supplies to the International Space Station (ISS), expanse officials said on Friday.

The restricted Ariane armament module lift soured at 7.08 p.m. (2208 GMT) from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on the northeast shore of South America, carrying a 20 tonne load module, the heaviest explosive ever launched on an Ariane rocket.

The vessel, dubbed "Johannes Kepler" in take of the 17th century Teutonic physicist and mathematician, is the ordinal Automatic Transfer Vehicle (ATV) aggregation has contributed to the ISS program. The first docked with the ISS in primeval 2008.

The ATV is fashioned to have fuel, food, clothing and gas to the ISS gathering as well as spare parts and is cod to cut with the ISS on Feb 23.

Billed by the dweller Space Agency (ESA) as a major contest for Europe's expanse program, the ATV docks with the ISS without manlike intervention.

"The precision of the ATV is large compared to the accumulation of the vehicle," Nico Dettmann, ESA's ATV Programme Manager said in a television interview. "We have redesigned the (cargo) racks and every demolition is 50 kg (110 lb) lighter," he said.

The ATV has three nowadays the load capacity of Russia's Progress container and was developed by the ESA as conception of a swop arrangement with the U.S. expanse authority NASA.

Instead of paying change for its deal of the station's operating costs and also to bonded added traveler access, ESA is providing the ATV and other components.

"A flooded ATV assignment costs around 350 meg Euros ($475 million), the ATV satellite itself business for around 200 meg Euros ($270 million)," Pal Hvistendahl, ESA spokesman told Reuters.

"The information that led to the development, manufacturing, fittingness and start of ATV-1 (launched in 2008) outlay 1.3 billion Euros ($1.75 billion)," he said.

Four more ATVs are designed for the expanse station, and NASA haw acquire more with the ESA as its expanse shuttle fast is cod to be retired after its incoming designed start on Feb 24.

The expanse station, which is most 85 percent complete, is a $100 billion send by 15 nations.

(Reporting by herb Miles, redaction by Tim Pearce)

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