Europe’s space agency (ESA) just launched a behemoth of a spaceship to link up with the international space station (ISS), carrying a staggering 20 tons of freight with them. The payload apparently includes food, water, equipment and “Personal items”. One can only imagine, now they are testing sex in space, what that entails, but I digress.

I could spend time trying to explain exactly what this work of European tax-euro’s does exactly, but luckily the ESA has also created a nice, albeit a bit dry, video to explain exactly how things work, including some nice footage from the actual thing.

I always find it fascinating that launches like these are possible. Just imagine all the things that could go wrong, all the different engineering feats and calculations that need to work together for this thing to go flawlessly into space. Some sources for more reading on the subject are:

BBC’s article on the matter
ESA’s own press release (includes nice flash animation)
PhysOrgs article
Wikipedia site for the launcher