Orion Handling Qualities During International Space Station Proximity Operations and Docking

The Orion spacecraft is designed to automatically rendezvous and dock with many vehicles, including the International Space Station. However, the crew is able to assume manual control of the vehicle's attitude and flight path. In these instances, Orion must meet handling-qualities requirements established by NASA. Two handling. qualities assessments were conducted to evaluate preliminary designs of the vehicle using a six-degree-of-freedom, high-fidelity guidance, navigation, and control simulation. The first assessed Orion's handling qualities during the last 20 ft before docking and included both steady and oscillatory motions of the docking target. The second focused on manual acquisition of the docking axis during the proximity operations phase and subsequent station keeping. Cooper Harper handling-qualities ratings, workload ratings, and comments were provided by 10 evaluation pilots for the docking study and five evaluation pilots for the proximity operations study. For the docking task, both cases received 90% level 1 (satisfactory) handling-qualities ratings, exceeding the requirement. All ratings for the proximity operations task were level 1. These evaluations indicate that Orion is on course to meet its handling-qualities requirements for proximity operations and docking.