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The Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) is a European Space Agency autonomous, expendable logistic transportation system for Low Earth Orbit. The ATV will be launched by Ariane 5 and its mission is to contribute to the logistic servicing of the International Space Station: via the delivery of a cargo (crew items, scientific experiments, spare parts..) as well as of fluids such as propellant, water and compressed air via the provision of an extra service consisting of retrieving the station wastes when departing (replacing the upcoming cargo) and getting rid of them through the final destructive atmospheric re-entry of the ATV itself via the contribution to the orbit control of ISS by providing a reboost and attitude control capability to the ISS. The ATV consists of a Spacecraft and an Integrated Cargo Carrier. The Spacecraft includes all subsystems necessary for the automated flight to the ISS and for the reboost, including the propellant tanks and the thrusters.

The ARD capsule is a European Space Agency project, designed and developed in very limited budget and schedule. These constraints had induced a particular strategy for Thermal Architecture activities: to decouple Thermal Protections Subsystem activities and Internal Thermal Control activities. The necessary relationships between the two fields have been achieved through interfaces data exchanges. These exchanges have been managed to guarantee the Vehicle Thermal Architecture coherence and to avoid risky conditions at system level. The consequence is important margins on the thermal design of the capsule. This is possible on this type of prototype where optimization is not required. Extension of such a process has to be considered cautiously.