Inside out

Our fortnightly digest of facts and rumours from Brussels and beyond.

Dubious honour

The European Space Agency’s next Automated Transfer Vehicle will be called Georges Lemaître, after the 20th-century Belgian astronomer who proposed the Big Bang theory. ATVs are supply ships to the International Space Station and previous vehicles have been named after Jules Verne, Albert Einstein and Johannes Kepler. But is it really such an honour to have one’s name on an ATV? After all, the short lives of these contraptions end when they are filled up with human waste and sent hurtling into the atmosphere.