What was the name of ESA's uncrewed cargo spacecraft series for the ISS?

The Automated Transfer Vehicle, or ATV, was ESA’s uncrewed cargo spacecraft series for servicing the International Space Station. These expendable vehicles carried food, water, equipment, propellant and gases to orbit.

The first ATV, Jules Verne, launched on March 9, 2008. Unlike a conventional resupply capsule, it could navigate autonomously toward the ISS and dock with the station. ATVs also performed orbit-raising maneuvers, using their engines to counter atmospheric drag and help maintain the station’s altitude.

ESA operated five ATVs between 2008 and 2015, named Jules Verne, Johannes Kepler, Edoardo Amaldi, Albert Einstein and Georges Lemaître. The series is easy to confuse with Russia’s Progress, Japan’s H-II Transfer Vehicle and Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus, but those were separate national or commercial spacecraft programs.