Nuclear submarine nuclear-powered submarine was first proposed in the United States Navy by the Naval Research Laboratory's Ross Gunn in 1939. Construction of the world's first nuclear powered submarine was made possible by the successful development of a nuclear propulsion plant by a group of scientists and engineers at the Naval Reactors Branch of the Bureau of Ships and the Atomic Energy Commission. In July 1951 the U.S. Congress authorized construction of the first nuclear-powered submarine, "Nautilus", under the leadership of Captain Hyman G. Rickover, USN (sharing names with Captain Nemo's fictional submarine in Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea",
Jules Verne ATV tests on 13 March and 14 March, ensuring that the CAM could be conducted as a last back-off mechanism should all other systems fail during the docking manoeuvre. Subsequently, the ATV performed two docking demonstration tests called "demo days". These tests consisted of a series of rendezvous with the ISS, and culminated in its final test: an actual docking with the aft port of the "Zvezda" service module on 3 April 2008. The rendezvous were performed by a fully automated system using GPS and optical sensors, including a videometer and telegoniometer. When "Jules Verne" was from the space station, the