Docking mechanisms for nano and micro satellites

At today, few mating technologies for nano and micro satellites have been designed and tested in relevant environment, despite the raising interest in making such platforms able to join, separate and independently reconfigure. In this framework, this paper presents a review of the research activities carried out in the last five years at the University of Padova with respect to small satellites docking mechanisms. Research in this field began with the projects ARCADE project (Autonomous Rendezvous, Control And Docking Experiment) and its re-flight ARCADE-R2, that made it possible to develop and test a small-scale gender-mate mechanism inspired by Soyuz and ATV docking systems. As a concurrent solution to the ARCADE probe-drogue configuration, the concept of semi-androgyny was then proposed, consisting in a hybrid docking port that can act both as probe and drogue thanks to its shape-shifting capability: to perform mating, one of the two identical interfaces is actuated to change its shape in "drogue", in order to wrap around the other one creating the solid joint. Furthermore, two different working prototypes were developed to further investigate power, data and fluid transmission. In parallel, the results collected by ARCADE flights were employed in the design of a docking and recharging system for small drones