The video shows a rendezvous test performed at ESA’s Guidance, Navigation and Control Laboratory using GRALS, the lab’s duo of robotic arms mounted on 33-m long rails. One arm holds the navigation unit of an approaching spacecraft, the other holds a scale model of a spacecraft target or ‘client’. Both are suspended in the centre of a long dark room with only one lamp illuminating the scene, mimicking the Sun. 

The European Space Agency (ESA) and industry are working together to develop and test interfaces that will allow satellites to approach in space, recognise each other and dock. The first hardware tests for this step took place at ESA’s testing facilities at ESTEC, the agency’s technical centre in the Netherlands, evaluating different interfaces and technologies developed by The Exploration Company with Sener, GMV, Almatech and CDS. 

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