A target date has been set for ATV George Lemaître’s launch: 25 July. Space trivia: on that same day in 1984 Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to perform a spacewalk during the Salyut 7 mission.

As usual the last ATV in the series will sit atop an Ariane launcher leaving Earth from Europe’s spaceport in Korou, French Guiana.

Of course this is spaceflight and many things can happen in the next four months. Follow this blog for the latest updates and news.

Here is a taster of what we have in store, a beautiful time-lapse video of ATV-4’s launch last year: