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When will the mother ship annd landed craft meet again on minmus?


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The mother ship is at 10km polar obit and I just landed the ship at the greater flat (Very close to the Equator). I wanted for 6 hours (with time wrap) but the mother ship has never passed above my head. (close but not exactly). When will that pass above me again? Thanks!!

Edited by Carrot
better english
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You're probably best taking one of the "close" passes. Minmus orbits are fairly slow so a small inclination change will be quite cheap. A precise overpass could be a long wait.

I wrote a script to tell me when an orbiting polar satellite would pass over (within 2km) various contract waypoints on the Mun (which rotates very slowly, not sure about Minmus in comparison) and there was a 40 day wait in some cases.

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Minmus has a sidereal rotation period of 1 day 5 hours 13 minutes 20 seconds (KSP wiki). In that time it will rotate once around its own axis. In one complete rotation you will pass under your mothership's orbit exactly twice. However that does not mean that at that exact moment your ship will actually be directly overhead, it might be on the other side.
Your mothership being on the other side does not need to mean you can not launch and rendezvous. Simply launch when you pass underneath the orbital path, make sure you launch in the correct direction. You do not want to orbit at 180degrees with your target. And rendezvous just like you would around any other body.

Edited by Tex_NL
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Sideral rotation period 40400s

Assuming perfect polar orbit 10km altitude - 70km semi-major axis - orbital period ~2769.2118s

So each orbital period, the portion of equator it jumps is 2769.2118/40400=0.068545

 

Use continued fraction you can get rational approximation to this ratio, and the reduced denominator will be the number of periods you travel. The first approximation is just 15 orbital periods (i.e. ~11.5hr), in which case you can get to 10.6km to your original position

Edited by FancyMouse
fix calc error
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You don't have to wait until the mothership is directly overhead, just wait until its orbital plane is overhead. That will happen twice every Minmus day. Then launch into an orbit of roughly the same altitude as the mothership. You won't be at the same place, but it will be require little delta-V to adjust your orbit higher (to fall back) or lower (to catch up) to meet it.

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