Development of a cooperative operational rendezvous plan for Eureca and other maneuvering Shuttle payloads

This paper discusses the development of a new class of US Space Shuttle rendezvous missions which involve a maneuvering target vehicle. The objective of the analysis was to develop an operational plan to take advantage of the target spacecraft's maneuvering ability by making it responsible for a portion of the maneuvers necessary to achieve rendezvous. This work resulted in the development of a region in space relative to the Shuttle, called the control box, into which the target vehicle maneuvers. Furthermore, a mission operations plan was developed to implement the control box technique.