Is there a specific altitude I need for orbit on Mun?

[annallia]

I started over a "near" stock career. I kept Join Reinforcement and shoved all my other mods out the airlock (also have my usual tweaks to stock, but they shouldn't interfere with missions as it is just adjusting values on stock parts).

I got a mission to explore the mun. I had to, achieve orbit around Mun, transmit or recover experiments from space around Mun, land on Mun, and transmit or recover experiments from the surface.

I have the last 3 as complete after my flight, but the orbit one didn't tick for me.

I did not achieve orbit on my way there, I had one of those fluke moments where I was aimed perfectly at whatever I was aiming at, since I over engineer everything anyway and I still had most of the fuel in my transfer stage, and enough fuel to land, takeoff, and return to Kerbin in the lander stage I decided to go for the suicide drop burning up as much fuel as I had to to keep from crashing, and it worked, I ditched the transfer stage about 300m above the surface and it still had fuel! (but was close to running on fumes) and landed. When I took off again I noticed the orbit part was incomplete still so I put myself into an extremely low orbit (12.5k) and time warped myself around a few times.Yet on my return I noticed that the orbit parameter was still unchecked.

[s1l3nt_c0y0t3]

You have to actually have both your periapsis and apoapsis above the surface of the body to have it count as orbiting.

[mikegarrison]

I started over a "near" stock career. I kept Join Reinforcement and shoved all my other mods out the airlock (also have my usual tweaks to stock, but they shouldn't interfere with missions as it is just adjusting values on stock parts).

I got a mission to explore the mun. I had to, achieve orbit around Mun, transmit or recover experiments from space around Mun, land on Mun, and transmit or recover experiments from the surface.

I have the last 3 as complete after my flight, but the orbit one didn't tick for me.

I did not achieve orbit on my way there, I had one of those fluke moments where I was aimed perfectly at whatever I was aiming at, since I over engineer everything anyway and I still had most of the fuel in my transfer stage, and enough fuel to land, takeoff, and return to Kerbin in the lander stage I decided to go for the suicide drop burning up as much fuel as I had to to keep from crashing, and it worked, I ditched the transfer stage about 300m above the surface and it still had fuel! (but was close to running on fumes) and landed. When I took off again I noticed the orbit part was incomplete still so I put myself into an extremely low orbit (12.5k) and time warped myself around a few times.Yet on my return I noticed that the orbit parameter was still unchecked.

1) You don't actually have to orbit all the way around. You just have to be in an orbit.

2) The order of things matters for some of the contract conditions. Perhaps the contract in question only checks to see if you went from a hyperbolic path to an orbit, without checking if you went from sub-orbital to an orbit. I have noticed that I don't get credit for a sub-orbital condition unless I first establish an orbit. (The exception is Kerbin itself.)

An example of what I am talking about is that I had some tourists on the surface of Minmus. (They got there riding in a part that, for some reason, was not granting them any experience.) I transferred them to my command pod. But they still didn't get credit for landing on Minmus, even though they were landed on it. So I lifted off about a meter and then let the ship drop back down to the surface. Aha! The received credit. So you don't get credit for being landED on Minmus, you get credit for landING on it. Perhaps a similar thing is true of orbits.

Edited June 11, 2015 by mikegarrison

[annallia]

You have to actually have both your periapsis and apoapsis above the surface of the body to have it count as orbiting.

That is pretty much what I am asking, if I remember correctly the highest peak on Mun was only around 10km which is why I thought 12.5 would be more than enough, if it isn't then what would be?

[Capt. Hunt]

I'm not sure the altitude matters as long as the Perimun doesn't intersect the surface. Try launching another ship from Kerbin into munar orbit.

[FancyMouse]

I've seen some non-1.0 compatible mods will break similar things (old versions of DMagic orbit science, for example - updated versions work totally fine). Better double check, even if you said you only have few.

[Timk]

You don't have to do all the steps at once, so you can go back and orbit the Mun to complete the contract. You probably needed to do the orbit before landing.

[Snark]

That is pretty much what I am asking, if I remember correctly the highest peak on Mun was only around 10km which is why I thought 12.5 would be more than enough, if it isn't then what would be?

12.5 km is plenty high, I've orbited significantly lower than that. (A fun trick to pass the time: what's the lowest equatorial circular orbit you can manage without scraping your toes.)

To be in orbit, you have to satisfy two conditions:

1. Your periapsis is above ground (or, for bodies with an atmosphere, above the top of the atmosphere)

2. You have an apoapsis (i.e. you're not on an escape trajectory)

Other than that, you can be as low as you like.

[annallia]

Built a new rocket for the mun since I finally unlocked the MPL (just need to nab a few volunteers to run it yet) and landed it on Mun. I took off with my decent stage and achieved orbit at 10.2km (10.1pe/10.3ap if you wana be picky) and it finally ticked... Maybe it just didn't like me the first time?