Docking Milestone Achieved for Endurance

March 2025 - Endurance, our GEO life extension servicer, has reached a new technical milestone with the successful completion of its first ground docking test campaign.

Over the course of four intensive weeks, our engineering team put Endurance’s docking system through a comprehensive set of scenarios to validate its performance. The objective was to simulate real mission conditions and assess both the mechanical precision and reliability of the docking system in connection with a client satellite. 

Alexandre Tessier - Robotics Engineer, Docking System Lead

“We had several objectives for this test campaign. The first one was really to bring everything together -hardware and software- and the second one was to demonstrate the

capabilities and the performance in the relevant environment and

show that we can do what we say we do.”

The results were clear: multiple docking demonstrations were performed, showcasing the robustness of the system. This marks a decisive step in the maturity of the Endurance mission and strengthens our readiness for its future deployment.

Evangelos Germenis - Lead, Computer Vision and AI Team

“To do in-orbit servicing, you need to do rendezvous proximity operations. We achieved that and we proved the feasibility of a very important phase of servicing, which is docking.”

This milestone reflects the commitment of a team driving innovation and tackling a challenging mission to advance the technical foundations of in-orbit servicing. As we move forward, the data and insights from this test campaign will guide the continued optimization of our system.

Marion Andrieux - Chief Commercial Officer

“I was personally very proud of this team achievement because that test happened before the end of Phase C of Endurance. (...) And this test proved the feasibility of the mission.”

The Endurance #1 mission is supported by key public partners under the France 2030 initiative, including Bpifrance, CNES, the DGE, SGPI, DGA, and the DGRI, whose ongoing support is helping accelerate innovation in European space infrastructure.

Please find the  video overview of the campaign below.

Docking tests for Endurance