Docking Orion: Choreographing a Space Dance

The Artemis campaign has a variety of spacecraft and systems uniquely developed to perform specifics roles and missions including its cornerstone, Orion -- the only spacecraft capable of taking humans from Earth to lunar orbit.

What makes Orion so unique is its design, which allows it to seamlessly maneuver and perform safe and precise docking with different types of spacecraft, like SpaceX's Starship human landing system, NASA's Gateway lunar space station, or even other vehicles if needed such as habitats and propulsion systems. This capability is crucial for enabling the transportation of crew and cargo between different spacecraft, as well as for facilitating the assembly and servicing of spacecraft in deep space.

LiDAR provides the position information of the target vehicle, such as HLS, and as Orion goes through the entire docking procedure from a far distance out down to the two vehicles touching, LiDAR tells Orion's navigation exactly where the other spacecraft is and then it makes automatic corrections to ensure those two spacecraft are docked perfectly.