Probing Eve's surface without manouvre nodes

[xendelaar]

Today, I foolishly accepted a mission to collect data from the surface of Eve. I thought it would be easy cash, but I forgot that I just started a new career and didn't have the manoeuvre nodes unlocked yet...I've visited minmus and the Mun without manoeuvre nodes before, but never attempted this beyond Kerbin's SOI...

I decided to give it a go and just tried to approach this problem as if it was a rendezvous mission with a satellite. I parked a probe in a solar orbit and lowered my periapsis until it intersected with Eve's orbit. When I reached periapsis, I then lowered my apoapsis until it was a bit higher than the orbit of Eve and just waited until I got an encounter. I didn't think it would work but after a lot of waiting, Eve's gravity pulled me in! I was quite surprised and a bit proud that I managed to get an encounter this early in this career.

I then used aerobreaking to slow down and finally splashed down in the sea to perform SCIENCE and gain 600k of sweet juicy profit! Here are some pictures. I didn't take many pictures because I figured I was doomed to fail this mission... XD Anyway... I'm just very exited and I wanted to share this with you guys.

Here's a picture of the probe on the launchpad. Ain't she a beauty.

Lowering Periapsis to match Eve's orbit

I didn't make any pictures of lowering my Apoapsis... But after waiting a couple of years I finally got an encounter I had to make some adjustments in order to keep the ship in one piece....

After that, landing was quite tricky due to Eve's unforgiving atmosphere... but the vessel pulled through and we finally splashed down in the ocean!

Edited November 1, 2015 by xendelaar

[nsgallup]

Nice! Always satisfying to complete a mission with lower then ideal tech