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 were built by several different aerospace companies; the docking and refuelling systems were produced by RSC Energia in Russia, the pressurised section was assembled by Alenia Spazio in Turin, Italy, and the propulsion system was constructed by EADS Astrium in Bremen, Germany. The propulsion system was integrated with the pressurised compartment in Bremen, before the spacecraft was moved to the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, for testing. It arrived at ESTEC on 15 July 2004. "Jules Verne" was launched into low Earth orbit atop the maiden flight of the Ariane 5ES carrier rocket. Lift-off