Rendezvous
Flight Dynamics Officer

If the Shuttle has to acquire or get close to anything else in orbit, the Rendezvous FDO makes it happen.
A specific and additional certification beyond Orbit FDO was defined to handle both deploy-retrieve and ground-up rendezvous planning and operations.
The Rendezvous Flight Dynamics Officer (FDO) is responsible for planning and executing the precise orbital maneuvers required for spacecraft rendezvous. This uniquely-certified FDO ensures that the Space Shuttle follows the correct trajectory to meet up with a target, typically another spacecraft, space station, or satellite in orbit. The Rendezvous FDO calculates the timing, velocity changes, and orbital adjustments needed to bring the two spacecraft into close proximity, ensuring successful docking or retrieval. This role demands a deep understanding of orbital mechanics, physics, and the use of navigation and tracking data to continuously update flight plans during the mission.
Training and certification for a Rendezvous FDO are extensive and specialized. They must first be certified as a general Orbit FDO, which includes a rigorous understanding of spacecraft propulsion systems, orbital mechanics, and mission planning. Afterward, they undergo additional training specifically focused on rendezvous operations, which involves advanced simulation work, practice with rendezvous procedures, and handling contingencies such as aborts or trajectory corrections. This training is conducted using both offline discussions, training workflows and desktop-based simulations and the high-fidelity simulations (both generic and flight-specific) in Mission Control that replicate the actual mission conditions. The Rendezvous FDO must pass a series of peer evaluations and simulation approvals to become fully certified. They also participate in joint training exercises with astronauts to understand how to support rendezvous from both ground and space perspectives.

Rendezvous Profile Maneuvers
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All Orbit FDOs were able to execute non-Day-of-Rendezvous (DOR) burns, but special training and simulation preparation was allocated for the DOR shift support from the FDO console. The FDO is prime for computing ALL rendezvous maneuvers until onboard sensor data becomes available.
Common rendezvous maneuvers:
- NC – controls phasing between chaser and target in the future
- NH – sets up chaser to be at a defined delta-height from the target at a future time
- NSR – makes the chaser coelliptic with the target
- NPC – controls and nulls the planar difference between the chaser and the target
- Day-of-rendezvous set: NCC, Ti, MC1, MC2, MC3, MC4
As mentioned above, any certified Orbit FDO could plan and execute the non-DOR maneuvers, but usually the Rendezvous FDO, along with the Flight Design and Profile Support teams, would have planned the overall rendezvous profile long in advance, so that the maneuver updates were fine tuning the trajectory, as opposed to a complete “from-scratch” profile. If and when that was required, it was the responsibility of the Rendezvous FDO (and the FDO support teams) to develop this new trajectory profile.
Deploy-Retrieve Profile
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Typical Deploy-Retrieve payloads: SPAS, SPARTAN, WSF
Station-keeping constraints
- Payload communications range
- Orbiter-to-payload minimum range
- Minimize perturbations and phasing maneuvers
Ground-Up Profile
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The Orbiter must be launched into a “phantom plane” that will match the target’s orbit or a planned “control box” some number of days later, taking into account orbital perturbations and all intervening maneuvers.
Ground-up missions require Launch Window/Launch Targeting computations and a plane change maneuver somewhere in the rendezvous profile.
OMS-2 is used as a phasing maneuver, as are separation burns associated with deployables.
Ground-up rendezvous missions usually have very tight propellant budgets and are much more sensitive to launch slips than Deploy-Retrieve missions.
Rendezvous Launch Window
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Planar window
- Defined by amount of ascent performance and/or thermal constraints
Phase window
- Defined by minimum altitudes, propellant available, etc.
Actual launch time and rendezvous day determined by the overlap of the two windows.
Day of Rendezvous Timeframe
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The FDO is responsible for evaluating the various ground solutions based on all available vector sources (ground, PROP, and FILT), discussing the maneuver with the Rendezvous GPO, and recommending further action to the Flight Director.
In the event that the onboard computers are unable to target the burns, the FDO can provide accurate solutions based on the onboard relative state.
In the event that the onboard state vector is corrupted by bad sensor data, the FDO will be able to “reset” the relative state.