Rendez-vous & docking

Rendez-vous is the process of making two spacecraft arrive at the same place at the same time with a small relative velocity. Docking is the final controlled approach after rendez-vous.

Screenshot placeholder: two orbital trajectories meeting near a target spacecraft.

Choose a target flight or stage. The active spacecraft should first reach a similar orbital plane and altitude.

Plan burns that reduce:

• Inclination difference.
• Apoapsis and periapsis mismatch.
• Timing error between the two spacecraft.

The closer the orbits are, the smaller the final correction burns will be.

If the spacecraft is ahead of the target, use a slightly larger orbit to slow its angular motion. If it is behind the target, use a slightly smaller orbit to catch up.

Add a burn to enter the phasing orbit, wait one or more revolutions, then add another burn to match the target orbit near the encounter.

At the encounter, add a burn that cancels relative velocity. This changes a flyby into a rendez-vous.

Good rendez-vous planning usually produces:

• A close approach distance that is small enough for final operations.
• A relative speed that can be cancelled with available propellant.
• Enough time after the burn for docking or mission actions.

Docking requires a final approach after relative velocity is nearly zero. Use small burns and avoid large timeline moves once the vehicles are close together.

For multi-launch missions, keep the campaign dependencies in mind. Each vehicle must be researched, built, launched, and simulated before it can participate in the rendez-vous plan.