"HAESSIG Frédéric Pierre Tamatoa" wrote in
:


Jorge R. Frank a écrit dans le message :
...
Ben Sisko wrote in
:

ISS partners would demand that China first demonstrate that its
systems are reliable enough to perform safe docking. This means
China will have to do its own dockings with its own equipment a few
times.

The ISS partners would be on very shaky ground if they demanded a
more rigorous testing program for Shenzhou than is currently being
done with ESA's ATV and Japan's HTV.

I don't know about HTV, but ATV is using the same russian docking
mechanism as progress at least as far as the mechanical parts go, so
this is quite validated.

HTV uses the Common Berthing Mechanism (CBM), which is considered well-
validated on the US side.

As for approach, the first ATV flight will
carry a KURS as a redundant ( payload ) system, in order to validate
the european system. There are also numerous redundancies and ground
and crew checks in the system.

IIRC, the European system was also tested on a shuttle-Mir flight (STS-84),
using a set of retroreflectors mounted to the US docking module on Mir to
match the pattern of retroreflectors on the aft end of Zvezda, where ATV
will dock. That system might have changed some since STS-84, though. Do you
know?

The HTV rendezvous/docking system was tested standalone on ETS-VII (Orihime
and Hikoboshi) starting in 1997.

--
JRF

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