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Another guide to Rendezvous


Wizard Kerbal

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This is how I dock around celestial bodies, but other guides are very helpful, too.

When I want to rendezvous with spacecraft, but don’t wanna wait for their ideal location in orbit or don’t know it, just launch straight away!

Enter an orbit lower than you target. It depends on the target’s orbit and the celestial body, but usually 2-3 km is best. If an orbit below is impossible, then just go above.

Then, the waiting game. Plot a maneuver mode and press next orbit until your nodes are the closest possible. Then close and reopen it, and mess with the maneuvers until you have a rendezvous of .3 km or less. Then, when you commit the burn, it may be helpful to close it and do the rest yourself.

Once you get to the rendezvous, Set Navball velocity to “target” by clicking  where it says orbit/surface if it hasn’t already been set.

Align yourself to the yellow “retrograde” indicator :retrograde:. Once you pass by and start losing distance, throttle up until your velocity says 5 m/s or less.

Once within 200 meters, select the docking port of your choice. Now set the little icons to the bottom left of the screen to docking mode(the blue one with the circle). Now, engines will no longer be used. Turn on RCS and set the mode to LIN not ROT. 
 

Align yourself with the docking port with liberal use of RCS, then at good alignment kill your velocity to .0 m/s. Align with the pink “target :targetpro:” indicator on your navball. Puff forward, then align the yellow prograde :prograde: with the target indicator. The continue puffing forward, staying aligned. It depends on the docking port, but stay below .4 m/s

Let the magnets do their job!

Edited by The wizard of me
The first step was too long
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