My first asteroid mission...

[cyberpunkdreams]

... after a mere 700 hours or so of (heavily modded) KSP. I went with an unmanned probe loaded with DMagic Orbital Science asteroid stuff and a KAS harpoon to grab the surface... only to realise when I got there that the harpoon sticks fine but it doesn't count as grabbed as it would with a grabber.

Anyone got any suggestions for how to fix this? If not, it's not a total disaster, as I got the near space science and will know for next time

[LordFerret]

Congratz on your 1st asteroid. Yea, you need that grabber. Also something to remember, when you go to 'dock' with the grabber, right-click the asteroid and select 'target center of mass' first... it makes life easier.

Used to be if you EVA'd and jetpacked a Kerbal up to the asteroid (touching it) you could right-click and do some science (I think it was a surface sample, if I recall). Last time I tried however, it didn't work. Maybe someone else can confirm this?

[Alpha 360]

Just yesterday I caught my first asteroid. It was a C class asteroid with only 125 tons of ore inside of it. But i did it! I thought it was going to be difficult to rendezvous with it. Wrong. I thought I would be difficult to attach to it. Wrong. Finally, I thought I would be easy to shift its orbit. STRIKE OUT!

Edited April 4, 2017 by Alpha 360
"Kouston, we have several problems, but that doesn't matter so we want to continue on with the mission."

[cyberpunkdreams]

Hehe, thanks for the advice. It'll be the grabber next time... shame the harpoon doesn't do the trick; I feel like it should from a realism/thematic point of view. I'm a way off trying to shift one of these things though...

[Urses]

I'm not 100% sure, but i mean the JAW from ART will work fine too as Graber. Im not on PC and can't confirm it. If anybody can Support here for me i will realy appreciate this. Oh one more Seti Parts Klaw Jr. works to as grabber (realy nice small beast for Probes).

Funny Kabooms

Urses

[Zeiss Ikon]

I just finished my first successful asteroid mission (see my post in What Did You Do thread).  I had no problem getting the Klaw to catch, and was able to successfully steer the captive rock (just over 960 tonnes of it) into a stable orbit around Kerbin.  With chemical rockets only, no less (haven't unlocked NERV, not sure if I will)!  Poodles rule (but be sure to bring enough of them).

On 4/3/2017 at 10:29 PM, LordFerret said:

Used to be if you EVA'd and jetpacked a Kerbal up to the asteroid (touching it) you could right-click and do some science (I think it was a surface sample, if I recall). Last time I tried however, it didn't work. Maybe someone else can confirm this?

It still works, but you have to right-click on the asteroid, not on the Kerbal.  I just got back from an asteroid mission where Luory collected such a sample.  BTW, thanks for the tip on targeting center of mass -- it seems obvious, but if it's not automatic, I could easily have wound up doing nothing but spinning up the asteroid-vessel combination when I tried to boost it back toward Kerbin.

[Gargamel]

If you happen to miss the CoM of the 'roid when 'docking', you can always let the claw gimbal free and then recenter your axis of thrust into the CoM, then lock down the claw again.  I've ended up with weirdly attached ships this way, but it works.