Rendezvous – Wikipedia

The rendezvous It is a maneuver carried out by two objects in flight in space, usually a spacecraft and an orbiting station around the earth (indicated respectively as “active vehicle” and “passive vehicle”, or in English terminology as “chaser” and “target”)) , aimed at approaching them. Often this term is improperly used to indicate the achievement of a planet by a space probe.

The difficulty of this operation is very high since the orbital speed and the orbit must coincide perfectly.

Primary end of a rendezvous maneuver is the attachment ( docking ) to the other vehicle, made possible by the presence on both vehicles of compatible mechanisms suitable for the realization of aganning. Once the two objects are hooked, using special connection tunnels it becomes possible the passage of astronauts and/or material from one vehicle to the other.

Generally two types of approaches are used by the vehicle active in approaching the passive one:

• V-Bar or along the direction of the “target” speed;
• R-bar That is, along the ideal joint between the “target” and the mass center of the planet around which it is orbit.

Both strategies can be used in the same maneuver; For example, in the case of the Space Shuttle, after the tragedy of Columbia, an approach along the R-bar was first performed, to position the shuttle in such a way that it could be comfortably observed by the ISS to verify the integrity of the thermal panels placed on the belly of the shuttle. Later a maneuver was implemented to bring the spacecraft to the V-BAR and the final docking took place in this mode.

• August 13, 1962: Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 approach 6.5 km. This distance is reached thanks to precise trajectory calculations in the launch phase.
• June 16, 1963: Vostok 5 and Vostok 6 repeat this maneuver.
• December 15, 1965: first piloted renders of two spatial ships with crew: Gemini 6 and Gemini 7. The minimum distance between the two capsules is 30 cm.
• March 16, 1966: First hook in the history of human flights in space: Gemini 8 hooks to an unmanned satellite.
• July 19, 1966: Gemini 10 hooks to an unmanned satellite and uses the driving force of this to change its trajectory. In this second trajectory a further rendezy maneuver is performed with a different satellite from the first.
• October 30, 1967: First hook of two unmanned ships of the Sojuz type called Cosmos 186 and Cosmos 188.
• October 26, 1968: Rendezvous of Sojuz 3 with Sojuz 2 without crew. The attachment of the two ships fails.
• January 16, 1969: hooking of Sojuz 4 with Sojuz 5. Two cosmonauts leave their spacecraft to move on to the other. It is the first passage of Cosmonauti performed between two spacecrafts.
• March 3, 1969: Apollo 9 performs the first hook of an Apollo command module with the lunar module. Two days later follow the passage of astronauts from the control module to the lunar module via the appropriate connecting tunnel.
• May 23, 1969: First Rendezvous and hooking in the lunar orbit performed by Apollo 10: the lunar module Snoopy perform the maneuver with the command module Charlie Brown .
• July 20, 1969: Rendezvous in lunar orbit between Michael Collins command module, and BUZZ Aldrin’s lunar module and Neil Armstrong.
• October 13, 1969: first rendezvous of three spacecrafts: Sojuz 6, Sojuz 7 and Sojuz 8. The planned attachment of the three ships fails.
• April 23, 1971: Sojuz 10 hooks at the Saljut 1. Space station 1. No ride of the cosmonauts is performed.
• June 6, 1971: Sojuz 11 hooks at the Saljut 1. Space station 1. The first step is performed in a space station.
• May 26, 1973: first hook of an Apollo spacecraft at the American SkyLab space station
• July 17, 1975: First international hooking of two spacecrafts within the mission and Apollo-Sajuz project
• January 22, 1978: first transport spacecraft without Progress 1 crew 1 which hooks at the Saljut 6 space station
• April 11, 1987: after several attempts that lasting several days, the hooking of the KVAN 1 module with the Mir Space Station manages. For the first time in history, a space station had been expanded directly into the orbit around the earth.
• February 26, 1995: the American Space Shuttle Discovery performs a rendezvous maneuver with the Russian space station Mir, turning around it in order to inspect it. However, a hook is not performed.
• June 29, 1995: The American Space Shuttle Atlantis hooks to the Russian space station Mir.