Getting Two Object to Intersect Outside Planetary Orbits

[rollo1002]

I am having a difficult time getting two ships to intersect in outside orbits of Kerbin or other planets.

Scenario: I have a satellite being sent to Ike and well it ran out of fuel. So I'm trying to meet up with this satellite to give it more fuel so it can continue on it's mission but I can't get an intersect to get closer then let's say 8km or 9km from each other in the outer orbit of Kerbin.

Is it even possible to do what I'm doing? I almost feel that you have to be in orbit of a planet or moon to make the intersects occur.

EDIT::: Great! Thanks for all of the responses!

Edited November 10, 2015 by rollo1002

[Highguard]

Yes it's possible.

If you're not in orbit around a moon, you're in orbit around a planet.

If you're not in orbit around a planet, you're in orbit around the sun.

Sooo ... you're in orbit around the sun. It's a big orbit, but it's an orbit.

[Empiro]

Depending on where you are, 8-9km is actually a very close encounter. When I intercept asteroids in solar orbit, the initial close encounter is often hundreds km apart. When you get close, all you need to do is push the retrograde velocity marker on top of the retrograde target marker, and you'll keep heading toward your target.

[TheXRuler]

What Empiro said. Basically it's the same procedure as when docking in Kerbin orbit. The main problem is that a Solar orbit is so big (simplifying things here) that your encounter is going to be FAAAAAAR more sensitve to any change. If your craft isn't too heavy (with large fexible craft rotating can cause several hundred km of deviation) you could try thrust limiting your engines to like 2% for more precision. Alternatively use RCS for very precise manouvres.

[uncle_jew]

8-9km (even 100km) is not a problem in a solar orbit. The reason why you need close approaches in low orbits is that due to the curvature of the orbit, spaceships in different orbits start drifting relative to each other, which makes an approach from a long distance very difficult.

But the curvature of a solar orbit is very low, so if you arrive at a point e.g. 100km from the target spacecraft and cancel the relative motion, you can just give your spacecraft a delta v of like 5m/s directly towards the target, and arrive almost exactly at a target a few hours later.