A Long Sad History: Automatic Docking on Orbit

Stephen Granade

Wikipedia’s Definition

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1965: Gemini Tests Docking

Dec 1965: Gemini 6A and 7Rendezvoused on Orbit

Borman Lovell

Schirra Stafford

March 1966: Gemini 8 the Whirligig

March 1969: Apollo 9

Oct 1968: Soyuz 3 and Soyuz 2

Beregovoi

Shuttle Docks with ISS

Watch Our Shuttles Dock

Psst, show the two docking movies

Russian Progress CanDock Automatically

April 1971: Soyuz 10 vs. Salyut 1

Rukavishnikov

Shatalov Yeliseyev

Salyut 3 vs. Soyuz 15 (Aug 1974)

Demin Sarafanov

Salyut 5 vs. Soyuz 21 (July 1976)and Soyuz 23 (Oct 1976)

Volynov Zholobov

Rozhdestvensky Zudov

Salyut 6 vs. Soyuz 25 (Oct 1977)

Kovalyonok Ryumin

Soyuzes That Tried to Dock Thru 1977Soyuz 3/2 Oct 1968 Tried 3 times but failed.

Soyuz 6/7/8 Oct 1969 3 way failed b/c of electronics failure.

Soyuz 10 Apr 1971 Tried to dock w/Salyut 1. Hard dock failed.

Soyuz 11 June 1971 Successful dock w/Salyut 1. Crew died from depressurization during undock.

Soyuz 14 July 1974 Docked w/Salyut 3.

Soyuz 15 Aug 1974 Auto docking system failed.

Soyuz 17 Jan 1975 Docked w/Salyut 4.

Soyuz 18 May 1975 Docked w/Salyut 4.

Soyuz 19 July 1975 Docked w/US Apollo spacecraft.

Soyuz 20 Nov 1975 Unmanned; docked w/Salyut 4.

Soyuz 21 July 1976 Igla failed. Docking mechanism jammed on undock.

Soyuz 23 Oct 1976 Igla failed. Ran out of fuel before docking.

Soyuz 24 Feb 1977 Docked w/Salyut 5.

Soyuz 25 Oct 1977 Soft dock w/Salyut 6, but hard dock failed.

Soyuz 26 Dec 1977 Docked w/Salyut 6.

Kvant 1 (Apr 1987)

Kvant 2 (Mar 1989)

ETS-VII

ETS-VII Slides Away

Psst, show the ETS-VII movie

Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology

Orbital Express

What Gives?

• You don’t get to prepare like you want– No zero-g room on Earth

• Our intuition doesn’t help– Orbital mechanics is screwy

• Doing stuff on orbit is hard– If you mess up badly enough, whoops!

death.

• Practice helps– Look at Soyuz and at Shuttle dockings

versus the satellites

Docking is hard!