Question How to use realistically rendezvous with the ISS, and how to use Rendezvous MFD?

Krishnan

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Hello everyone! I have been playing orbiter, and I managed to rendezvous and dock with the ISS three times! However, I noticed that real-life space missions don't do a simple transfer to a higher orbit, then adjust DTmin accordingly. They do sets of small, planned maneuvers to raise the sides of the orbit. I also noticed these curved lines that are the vehicle's relative motion graphs. I became very interested, and wanted to know how to rendezvous in Orbiter, just like they do in real life. I found a MFD called Rendezvous MFD that displays those relative motion graphs, but I have no idea how to use it. So two questions:

1) How would I rendezvous realistically using minimum delta V (eg. space shuttle) once I got into a lower, chaser orbit, and the target is ahead of me? How would I plan and excecute those multiple transfers?

2) How do I use rendezvous MFD? I have no idea, even after reading the notepad document that came with it.

Help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 

N_Molson

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Hello,

There is a lot of documentation available on the Shuttle missions, so you might want to start there... Also I think that a couple of guys here know the Shuttle procedures quite a bit ;)
 

Gingin

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Hello.

First, I would say you must be confident with Rendez Vous Theory and practice with Delta Glider to do some simple ISS rendez vous without too much constraints.
There are some very good tutorials around.

What is special with Real rendez vous, and even more with the Shuttle ( as it was not automatic, but manually flown for the last part) is the fact that their was quite a lot of contraints.

Physiological: Rendez vous was often on day 3 for the Shuttle. Astronauts had time to rest a bit and get acclimatized to space .
Lighting: Rendez vous had to be at a special time of the day to avoid bad Sun angle when performing Docking (Plus the need of Star Tracker Night pass to improve the State Vector for close relative navigation )
Fuel efficient: Not too much ergols on board, so a near Hohmann coelliptic Orbit with a slow final phasing was prefered
Etc


It looks like that :
https://www.orbiter-forum.com/threads/sts-88-new-era-of-space-exploration-mission-sum-up.36739/

Nice that you like the motion plot and the rendez vous theory, it is a very interesting part of Space exploration.


I might suggest you some links to learn more about it
Especially the first ones and Rendez vous Theory:

https://wiki.flightgear.org/Space_Shuttle#Educational_Links_.2F_Shuttle_technical_files
 

kuddel

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...once upon a time (2017) I made a PDF from a web-page (I don't have the URL anymore) for a "general overview" of Shuttle rendezvous and proximity operations.
Maybe useful for others, too.
 

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Hi @Krishnan, I may have seen you on Reddit a few days ago. Welcome to the forums.
 
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