A gentle spacecraft docking.
Why must docking be slow and aligned?
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Why must docking be slow and aligned?
Fit both seals and the capture hardware before approaching.
A docking mechanism must meet its partner with a small relative velocity and the right orientation. Guide petals can correct only a limited misalignment. Doubling the closing speed quadruples the kinetic energy that contact must absorb. This bench separates closing motion, lateral offset and roll so you can see why alignment alone is not enough.
Illustrative 1D relative-motion docking rig with 2 m initial gap and 500 kg reduced mass. Capture limits 0.2 m/s, 0.1 m and 5° are teaching choices, not a flight-system specification. Completion means a safe approach configuration. Safe approaches reach the mating faces; the inspection rig holds unsafe or misaligned approaches short of hardware contact. Time to contact and contact energy remain unbraked 1D predictions; contact is not a stateful collision calculation. No orbital rendezvous, contact elasticity, thruster dynamics or docking operations guidance.
Set a capture-ready approach at no more than 0.2 m/s with both rings aligned.
Meet the docking capture limits.