Florida Tech Senior Design - Capstone
Satellite Docking System (SatDoc)
Project Summary
A SmallSat-compatible satellite docking system enabling on-orbit servicing, designed and ground-tested by an 8-person Florida Tech capstone team on an air-bearing table. I serve on the testing subsystem under the team's Testing Lead, and co-authored the project's Level 1 System Requirements, authored the project's Level 0 objectives, portions of the broader impact analysis.
Mission
Design, build, and test a SmallSat-compatible docking system that enables reliable, repeatable on-orbit servicing, demonstrating a full docking cycle between two model satellites on a ground-based air-bearing table testbed within defined offset and velocity tolerances.
Requirements
- > Alert on approach velocity exceeding 0.15 m/s
- > Minimum structural factor of safety: 1.25
- > Mass limit: ≤10 kg per docking interface side
- > Telemetry feedback of locked/unlocked status
- > Withstand ≥10 engagement/de-mate cycles
- > Successful docking at radial offset up to 0.10 m
- > Successful docking at angular offset up to 4°
- > Successful docking at roll offset up to 4°
- > Docking velocity window: 0.05-0.10 m/s
- > All critical models/simulations follow NASA-STD-7009B credibility standards
Results
Verified PerformanceSystem Requirements Review — In Progress
Deliver the project's Level 1 system requirements (10 total), covering structural safety, mass limits, telemetry, cycle life, and docking offset/velocity tolerances, each independently sourced and verified against NASA standards or the International Docking System Standard.
Architecture Selected
Evaluated four precedent on-orbit servicing systems and selected an active-to-passive docking architecture over an androgynous design, based on the project's servicer/client mission profile.
Next Phase
The team will soon proceed into Preliminary Design Review, where subsystem-level requirements for the Docking and Testing subsystems will be further defined against the Level 1 requirements.
Lessons Learned
"Researching prior docking systems before committing to an architecture — rather than designing in isolation — directly shaped the team's decision to go active-to-passive instead of androgynous, and grounded the offset/velocity requirements in an established standard (IDSS) rather than arbitrary values. Sourcing every requirement's rationale to a specific standard, test constraint, or prior mission also made the requirements defensible and traceable going into subsystem design."