Crew Dragon Docking Mechanisms

@ SpaceX HQ, Hawthorne, California, USA

In collaboration with:
Brooke Owens Fellowship

In 2019, SpaceX was on the precipice of sending an astronaut to the International Space Station, from American soil, for the first time since the Space Shuttle Program. The docking system is the part of the Crew Dragon capsule that interfaces with the station and a complex mechanical system. As part of the mechanisms team, I helped design, fabricate, qualify, and test space-grade components for the Demonstration-2 and Crew-1 missions. To streamline the (re-)qualification of components, I wrote custom Python code to detect docking events, allowing responsible engineers to auto-pass qualifying parts. In addition, I designed and built a portable testing box self-contained within a carry-on Pelican case that could operate the docking system at remote and inaccessible landing sites, away from the nominal requirement of a desktop connection.