unmanned space vehicle for delivery

NASA / ISS is now trying out SpaceX's Dragon. It's one of ways to replace the role of space shuttle, which were now retired.

They use the robotic arm CanadARM to "catch" the Dragon, when it is within 2 km range of the space station.

It's a very KISS approach to solve the problem.

When compared with China's ShenZhou 8 type of head-to-head dockiing method, this "catch" method is safer, when there's some mishappenings. ??? ( is it real ?)

It's also low tech enough for commercialisation too.

SpaceX successfully kicked off the rocket called Falcon 9 on 22 May, 2012

and attached to ISS ( International Space Station) on 25 May

animation 

soyuz docking explained

 

german instruments onboard 

shenzhou 8 launch and docking