SENTINEL placement question

[A Fistful Of Double Downs]

How much does SENTINEL telescope placement matter, and how wide an area does it cover? Like if I put one a slightly lower orbit than Dres for example will at detect asteroids anywhere just outside Dres orbit, or just anywhere near Dres itself, or just within a certain distance of the SENTINEL sat?

[Hotel26]

(A very good question and I second it!  I would add: how much does inclination matter also?  I want to put a SENTINEL "inside" the Moho orbit to find asteroids anywhere within about 5-6Gm from the Sun.  Can I use a zero-degree inclination, even though Moho's inclination is 7 deg?)

[Draalo]

A Sentinel has to be lower (AP/PE) than the target planet to detect some over time. It covers the space from the planet below PE and the planet above AP

@Hotel26: Inclination doesnt matter

[peteletroll]

Inclination actually matters: check sentinel telescope's right click menu for misalignment messages.

[Hotel26]

1 hour ago, peteletroll said:

Inclination actually matters: check sentinel telescope's right click menu for misalignment messages.

Good tip.  I have a ship on the way to find out (it's almost in position).  In my case, I actually want to find asteroids close to Moho's orbit but in a 0-degree inclination.

If that means I have to put my ship in a 7-deg incline, that is OK, as long as I can filter for asteroids that are a) Class E (huge) and b) as close to 0-deg as possible.  My intention is to find an interplanetary transit station, in a convenient inclination.  Moho obviously won't suffice for this since it is notoriously hard to get to.

I guess an interesting Plan B would simply be to put a huge space station into a Moho-like orbit but with 0-degree incline, same period and synchronized so that Moho and this station arrive at the same point in space once per year, in order to transfer a year's supply of fuel from Moho to the station.  (That's still a 7-degree inclination change though for that rendez-vous to occur.)

Edited September 6, 2020 by Hotel26

[Hotel26]

To update this, I am now running a dress rehearsal on Plan C: going to Moho with no inclination burn.  I figured this would be possible and went looking for it.

It is here: https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/The_annual_and_reliable_Moho_Transfer_Opportunity

Correcting a 7-degree inclination is cheaper in Moho's SOI than anywhere else, but as it turns out: I desire to arrive and stay in that 7-degree incline (relative to Moho), because it is still the ecliptic plane.

If the dress rehearsal works (sending an Atlas mining rig), I would follow up with a NERV fuel tanker and a modest space station.  Atlas would fill up, boost into a low Moho orbit (7-deg).  The tanker would offload the fuel and take it out to the space station and fill it.

Arriving ships (still in the ecliptic) would r/v with the space station, refuel, R&R, and then push on outward to the final destination.

The old joke about the stopped clock having the correct time twice a day applies here.  Twice in its year, Moho passes through the ecliptic and is available for capture or departure.

 

 

Edited October 21, 2020 by Hotel26