Science for Vessel Recovery

[meatballcannon]

So I've noticed that there are built in science bonuses for things like "recovered vessel from [such and such] orbit, or "recovered vessel from the surface of [so and so]"

I've kind of been roleplaying in career mode, and after a successful manned mission to Eve using expendable, preexisting tech, as well as a surface mission to Duna using ISRU, the citizens of Kerbin are finally ready to fund the very first fully reusable interplanetary vessel, the Argo Interplanetary Vehicle.

Unfortunately, the High Council of Bigwigs is putting a lot of their snack budget into this, and to impress them, I need to get every lick of science from the Argo's maiden voyage.

So back to reality. I want to fully understand the requirements for the recovery science. Here's what I'm wondering:

After the mission, can I dock a vehicle to unload the crew and land them and still get the "recovered vessel from X's orbit" points?

And if A lander goes to the surface, comes back, and then attaches to the main craft, and is not what get's recovered, do I get the surface points?

Hope the question is clear with all that useless text, and thanks in advance.

[Eric S]

As I understand it, the "recovered vessel from" science is specific to the control pod that landed there, and doesn't transfer. To make matters worse, you can only get one "recovered vessel from" per pod, so if you were to do a grand tour and land on every body, you'd only get points for the one most valuable landing place.

[Taki117]

Also, if you have a command pod on your mother ship, and one on your lander, and your mother ship doesn't land, you will only get "orbit of" recovery science.

[Streetwind]

...unless you carry the lander back home and land it on Kerbin to recover that.

Technically you could have a mothership that carries like 10 landers to their destinations and back to Kerbin, then land all 10 landers on Kerbin, and recover them all. Of course, you will still only get "recovered vessel returning from the surface of (...)" credit that way, but at least you will get it for every body you landed on.

[thescientist]

Luckily the amount of science that "recovering a vessel that has landed..., orbited..." is minimal, so you don't need to worry too much about (unless you have 4999 science point:))