Central active mechanism for unmanned space docking

This paper describes a novel docking mechanism for space applications. Generally speaking, docking mechanisms have two main objectives. On the one hand, they have to recover the linear and angular errors between a servicer and a customer spacecraft. On the other hand, they have to dissipate the kinetic energy associated with the relative motion between the bodies. The proposed docking mechanism consists of an active part mounted on the servicer spacecraft and a passive one linked to the target. The active part is equipped with a retractable rod fitted to a two degrees of freedom rotational joint. The rod is pointed toward a spherically suspended socket mounted on the target using electrical actuators exploiting optical feedback. The multibody simulations used to test the feasibility of the system are briefly presented. Finally, some alternative mechanical implementations of the pointing system will be described.