Orbital Puzzle

[GungaDin]

I took a job recently to park a satellite in particular orbit.  As you can see I have met all of the requirements except the Ascending node.  The orange line here is related to the job.  The blue line is my satellite. The ascending nod of the orange line is 0. I don't appear to have an ascending node since I don't have a target so I'm not sure what to do here. My inclination has to stay at around 1 so how can I play with my ascending node without changing my inclination?  If anyone is familiar with this mission I would appreciate any help. 

[mk1980]

the AN and DN nodes mark the intersection between your orbital plane and the plane of the requested orbit. the game only draws them on the target orbit line and not on your current orbit.

if the angle between the planes is 0, you don't have to change your inclination.

you put a simple prograde maneuver at your AP that raises the PE to roughly the required 5000 km and add some radial or anti radial to (roughly) line up the AP and PE with the locations of the 2 nodes on the target orbit.

you usually don't have to be super accurate. the contracts are fairly generous

 

[GungaDin]

1 hour ago, mk1980 said:

the AN and DN nodes mark the intersection between your orbital plane and the plane of the requested orbit. the game only draws them on the target orbit line and not on your current orbit.

if the angle between the planes is 0, you don't have to change your inclination.

you put a simple prograde maneuver at your AP that raises the PE to roughly the required 5000 km and add some radial or anti radial to (roughly) line up the AP and PE with the locations of the 2 nodes on the target orbit.

you usually don't have to be super accurate. the contracts are fairly generous

 

I think this orbit already matches the contract requirements of AP 760 and PE of 182.  What I don't understand is the final requirement of "longitude of descending node at 233 degrees".  I don't have a decending node and don't know how to move it if I did...

[bewing]

As mk1980 said, the An and Dn shown on your target orbit are relative to your current craft's orbit. The Longitude of Ascending Node listed in the contract is in the absolute coordinate system of the galaxy, and is completely irrelevant to anything that you need to do.

To complete the contract, hover your cursor over the An or Dn on your target orbit. You want that number to go to zero. You make the number go to zero by burning either Anti-normal just before the An, or Normal just before the Dn. You generally do this before you make your final adjustments to your Pe and Ap. You adjust your Pe and Ap by burning prograde or retrograde.

If you ever really do need to move your An on your orbit, the way to do it is to burn prograde just before or after your Ap. The Ap will rapidly move away from your current position in your orbit, and this will move your An. Similarly with your Pe.

Edited November 17, 2019 by bewing

[Fierce Wolf]

Your AP and PE must match the destination orbit's AP and PE. Furthermore, your An relative to destination must be less than 1º in difference. You are almost there!

[mk1980]

7 hours ago, GungaDin said:

I think this orbit already matches the contract requirements of AP 760 and PE of 182.  What I don't understand is the final requirement of "longitude of descending node at 233 degrees".  I don't have a decending node and don't know how to move it if I did...

you overlooked the "5" in front of both numbers. it's ~5760km AP and ~5180km PE.

in other words your orbit is supposed to look like the orange target orbit displayed by the game.

you can actually ignore the numbers in the contract description and just eyeball it based on the displayed target orbit.

[Laie]

10 hours ago, GungaDin said:

What I don't understand is the final requirement of "longitude of descending node at 233 degrees".  I don't have a decending node and don't know how to move it if I did...

Oh yes, you do have a descending node. It's not shown by default, but you have one.

"Ascending node" is where you cross the equator from south to north. Descending node is where you are crossing the equator going south. Even if you try very very hard to make your orbit exactly equatorial, you will still be off by a tiny amount. So you always have ascending/descending nodes, even if you do not know about them.

The game, however, doesn't show or tell your AN/DN relative to Kerbin. It only shows nodes when you have another object selected as target, and in that case you are shown the AN/DN relative to the target's orbit. Which, for practical purposes, is all you need to know.

[Superfluous J]

This is the classic case of the  game giving you too much information in one place (the contract) and not enough as much in another (your ship)

As @mk1980 says above:

4 hours ago, mk1980 said:

you can actually ignore the numbers in the contract description and just eyeball it based on the displayed target orbit.

Not only can you, you should do it that way. In fact if you're in map mode while doing your burns, not only can you eyeball the orbit but you'll know instantly when you complete the contract when the orbit lines vanish.

Note: You won't complete the contract for 10 more seconds due to that final clause in the contract.