ISRO's Rendezvous, Space docking and Berthing Experiment

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View: https://x.com/sdhrthmp/status/1847179739774988317

 

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Moved post above from main thread to create this one.
It sucks that I have been too occupied with life for an year now and have not been able to update the sections.
Kicking off long the pending threads.

View: https://x.com/ISROSpaceflight/status/1575842366027862016

View: https://x.com/ISROSpaceflight/status/1575842375330541569

View: https://x.com/ISROSpaceflight/status/1575842382016544768

 

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• Summarizing as acquisition of capability of connecting two in orbit spacecrafts temporarily or permanently.
• Essential tech for making a modular space station like MIR, ISS and Tiangong.

Quoted Ohsin from her Reddit.
Proposed Rendezvous and Docking Experiment.

From Outcome budget 2013-14^PDF

Overview of Twelfth Five Year Plan 2012-2017
. . .
4.13 In order to demonstrate emerging new technology developments, a series of experimental satellites have been planned. One of the major missions being the technology demonstration related to Docking and Rendezvous. These satellites will be flown on the PSLV missions as auxiliary or co- passenger satellites

Also from abstract of paper submitted at International Astronautical Federation.

All credits to Ohsin from NSF.

ISRO is planning an on-orbit Rendezvous Docking experiment in the near future, to develop and demonstrate the technology needed for rendezvous docking. In this experiment, two IMS(Indian Micro Satellite) Spacecrafts, one designated as target and the other designated as chaser, are launched by a PSLV launcher into two slightly different orbits. No communication link between the target and chaser during the far range rendezvous phase in which relative separation is around 50km to 5km range is envisaged and this phase is a ground guided phase. In the docking phase of the mission, docking sensors such as Laser Range Finder during the relative separation of 5 km to 0.25km, Docking Camera during the relative separation of 300m to 1m ,Visual Camera for real time imaging during the relative separation of 1m to docking are used respectively.

Source
And then I stumbled onto this MITAA newsletterPDF with a feature on Dr K Sivan. It also mentions a paper co authored by him titled "Performance Evaluation of a Vision Sensor in 3D Virtual Environment for Rendezvous and Docking Application"
Full(PDF): http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.sci-hub.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6461671
Wonder when this will happen..
Edit(18 Feb 2016 ):
In UIM 2015 Dr. M. Annadurai mentioned future Rendezvous & Docking Mission / Formation Flying using Microsats


View: https://youtu.be/aC1RPMUeyWw?si=9CdW2bVH7hTa0ZLN

Above snippet was extracted from http://livestream.nrsc.gov.in/plenary.html 46 min onward.
Also mentioned in video "A Journey from ARYABHATA to ASTROSAT" @ 12m5s.
http://www.isac.gov.in/media/A2A.webm
Edit (26 Feb 2016):
Official name is SpaDEx (Space Docking Experiment)
https://in.linkedin.com/in/ravikumar-lagisetty-3214b615

 

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Copied Antariksh Blogspot. Not using quotes for easier readability (no COPYVIO intended).

Wednesday, July 31, 2013
ISRO Rendezvous & Docking experiment Update
As mentioned previously on this blog, ISRO has been working on a rendezvous and docking (RVD) experiment mission involving two IMS (Indian Micro Satellite) series spacecrafts. ISAC, a ISRO centre, has been involved in developing navigation and guidance algorithm for RVD. In this experiment, two IMS Spacecrafts, one designated as target and the other designated as chaser, will be launched by a PSLV launcher into two slightly different orbits. There will be no communication link between the target and chaser during the far range rendezvous phase in which relative separation between the spacecrafts will be around 50km to 5km range and this phase will be a ground guided phase. In the docking phase of the mission, docking sensors such as Laser Range Finder during the relative separation of 5 km to 0.25km, Docking Camera during the relative separation of 300m to 1m ,Visual Camera for real time imaging during the relative separation of 1m to docking will be used respectively.

For the purpose of testing and verification of vision based docking algorithms before a real world implementation is carried out, ISRO has developed a 3D simulation environment that is being used to simulate docking phase of the mission. A snap of the simulation is presented in the Figure below.

[td][/td] [td]3D Simulation of Chaser and Target to test vision based RVD. (credit ISRO, [1])[/td]

​

Targeted Applications of RVD: RVD technology is one of many enabling technologies for ISRO's human space flight program. Another promising application of this technology will be increasing age of ISRO's satellites like that from IRS, INSAT and IRNSS systems. RVD technology will allow a resupply (fuel, power pack etc) spacecraft to dock with a satellite in orbit and allow for replenishment of fuel and power pack, thereby increasing satellites age. To facilitate this, as per my research, ISRO has been designing its newest satellite bus called I-6K, which is a unified bus with modular design ,multi EV panels and scalable structure (Bus module & payload module). A modular design will allow easy and fast replacement of bus module in the orbit by the resupply space craft. The resupply spacecraft might itself be a new bus module (with fuel, power pack etc.) that will dock with the payload module in the orbit after the old bus module undocks.



[1] Gladwin J, et al., Performance Evaluation of a Vision Sensor in 3D Virtual Environment for Rendezvous and Docking Application.

 

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Reference budget from older Lok Sabha Query.

 

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@haldilal I am taking liberty to move SPADEX related posts here if you don't mind.