Circumnavigating Ike: Duna's Volcanic Satellite

[DylanSP]

After the first successful orbital mission of Ike in the history of Kerbalkind, data has confirmed that Ike is geologically active!

The photo taken by the spacecraft below is among many taken aboard that hint at geological activity on Ike.

Following the discovery, the brightest minds of the space agency have theorized that Ike's volcanic activity can be linked to Duna's tidal forces on Ike.

The government has been well pleased with the Kerbal Space Agency's findings and has since granted bonus funds for future voyages to Ike.

Now, the agency selected Jebediah Kerman to operate a manned rover exploration of Ike to learn more about the red planet's volcanic moon.

 

Hi everyone! DylanSP here! I'm a new member of this forum, as you might be able to tell. When I got KSP2 in June, I was taken aback by the immersive experience. Is the game complete? No. But do I love KSP2? Without a doubt. Before I continue, I'd like to give credit to @Sp1f for inspiring me to start a ground-based circumnavigation mission of my own. You can check out their mission below.

 

 

As my fictional introduction suggested, during my circumnavigation of Ike, I will be exploring the stratovolcanoes on Ike. Along the way, I hope to find places of interest and maybe even an easter egg! Inevitably though, I will have quite the bug collection along the way. So this is also an opportunity to help the developers find all the bugs and squash them! Anyway, My journey will be documented by days, which I don't mean ig days or irl days since the mission began, but rather irl days of active progress since the mission began. 

With all that being said, let the journey begin!

Day 0 and Day 1

Preparation and the first part of the journey

Spoiler

To start. I took a few days beforehand to look at other people's rover builds and get inspired. When I decided to build my rover, I decided to combine different aspects from different rover builds to make my very own rover that I believe to be fit for Ike. I opted for a lightweight design. I also incorporated hydrogen thrust in case I couldn't overcome the steep terrain.  After assembly, I tested my rover on Kerbin to ensure there weren't any critical problems and to get a feel for my rover.

After the test, I made a few modifications to the rover, but besides that, I think I had made a decent model right off the bat, that should be ready to explore another world. Next, I just put my rover onto a rocket I made, and set sail to Ike!

                                                                                                            

The rocket ended up failing, so I had to make a few modifications to it before I could launch again. The next image is my redesigned rocket doing the gravity turn, after dropping my SRBs.

I had successfully got into orbit and was ready to set sail to Ike!     

                                                                                                                       

After getting my trajectory set toward Duna, I made a course correction that put me in an encounter with Ike. Regrettably, I didn't take any screenshots of entering the Duna system, but after getting in low Ike orbit I did get a screenshot, but unfortunately at night.

Unfortunately, I used more fuel than I had anticipated, so I ended up using 2/3 of my fuel reserved for roving on Ike, to land on Ike. But it is what it is. And besides, I don't think I'll necessarily need it anyway. Anyway, here's my pitch-black screenshot of landing on Ike. Also hilariously, my lights didn't do me any good on landing because I forgot that I would be landing my rover rear-first.

Hooray! I safely landed my rover on Ike! I hope Jeb is ready to venture into the unknown!

Before I show you my journey so far, I would like to share a few bugs I noticed almost right away after embarking on my adventure. Most notably, my solar panels were "Blocked by Ike" in the middle of direct sunlight! But then when night comes, they mysteriously start generating power! What kind of Kraken sorcery is that?!

Another bug: When I switched control from my rover to a vessel orbiting Duna, it wouldn't let me do so, and Duna started glitching out like some ghost planet! You can see a fragment of it on the left-hand side, but I wasn't able to get a better shot before the bug sorted itself out.

This isn't relevant to my mission, but I would like to show a better shot of this bug I got for a vessel orbiting Duna. That time around, Kerbin was the weird ghost planet.

Another bug I found on my mission was a strange floating plume of gas. I found several of them. In the picture I got, you can see it near the upper-left-hand side.

I also had a bug where my wheels may occasionally clip through the ground, but thankfully it never caused any harm to my rover, it just suddenly jumped up from the ground as the bug sorted itself out.

Back to my mission! Since flags cannot be seen on the tracking station like they could in KSP1, I used screenshots of the map to mark my location.  From there I would compare it to a blank screenshot of Ike and mark my location as precisely as possible.

Anyway, here is the progress I've made so far! Currently, I am on my way to explore the volcano you can see to the left of my path. The yellow point is where I landed. Unfortunately, my computer ran out of hard drive space in the midst of recording the first part of the journey, so I don't have video footage for that. The unrecorded part of the journey is shown in purple. The good news is I got an external drive so I can now store my byte-guzzling videos without worry, so from here on out I will be able to fully document the rest of the journey. For the final segment of my Day 1 journey, I have video footage as that was after I fixed the problem. The documented part of my journey, from here on out, will be shown in red.

And finally, here is a timelapse of the last segment of Day 1!

That's it for Day 0 and Day 1. Stay tuned for Day 2, where I will be exploring a stratovolcano!

 

Edited September 13, 2023 by DylanSP

[Sp1f]

Best of luck! I'm excited to see more of Ike.

[Socraticat]

I tried Minmus for my first circumnavigation. I'd like to revisit it after some bugs get sorted. I went for Gilly instead after realizing Minmus was going to take a good 20+ sittings with the craft and time commitments I had available. 

Ike is a good chunk of celestial! Good luck to you. I found both of my efforts to be extremely rewarding- traversing a moon with a craft you've built feels so much more immersive than just launching and landing.

I'm glad you've found inspiration here. The community really has some great enthusiasts.

[RevanX_LSR]

3 hours ago, Socraticat said:

I went for Gilly

I just finished watching your 40 minute timelapse on the forums. Good luck on minmus!

[DylanSP]

Day 2

Approaching and Climbing the Stratovolcano

Spoiler

I've made a lot of progress on Day 2! I approached a stratovolcano and then climbed to the rim! And this time I have all the footage of the trip.

Without further ado, let's get started!

Shown below we can see the volcano my rover is approaching. It is fairly steep, with an inclination of up to 50 degrees in some places. I had to briefly fire the engine a couple of times to keep my momentum going. In addition, I observed what appeared to be channels where lava must have flowed its way down the volcano. In some places, (like in the picture below) the terrain was so rugged that I caught a lot of vacuum. Jeb had an absolute blast! 

Oops! The base of the volcano has proven to be an unforgiving place! I lost one of my rear wheels!

I had to load my previous save, which was a little disappointing, but on the plus side, I encountered a beautiful solar eclipse!

This time I overcame the rugged terrain and was on my way up the volcano!

As my rover climbed slowly but steadily, the view became spectacular!

Jeb taking a snack break while enjoying the view.

Before I knew it, I had made it to the eastern rim of the volcano! It is so high up, you can easily see the circumference of the ground! In fact, the game automatically switched to orbital velocity! 

But that's not all, the southern rim is even higher! A full kilometer higher! So I made my way over there. The height from here was above 9000m. That's higher than Mount Everest! Overall, the base starts at 4000-4500m, giving the volcano nearly 5000m of elevation above the surrounding ground. In the picture below, my rover overlooks the volcanic crater. I will explore this on Day 3, to see if there is anything of interest before Jeb waves goodbye to the awe-inducing volcano.

What's this? Jeb wants to go on a little adventure before calling it a day.

So he made the leap of faith and blasted his monopropellant and set sail to get a birds-eye view of the crater. He found it breathtaking, but also rather scary!

I wanted to get a top-down view of the volcano, however, the EVA fuel levels had different plans, so I had to turn around before I could get any good shots. Jeb showed visible relief as he safely landed beside the rover.

Anyway, those are the main highlights of Day 2! Now onto the progress map!

My trajectory was definitely a lot more straight now that I could visually see where I was going. For Day 3 I plan to explore the crater, before reaching the northern rim and then skirting along the rim to the western side, where I will begin the descent down from the stratovolcano. I will definitely need to use my hydrogen thrust to keep me on the ground so I don't suffer a catastrophic failure!

And lastly, here is the full timelapse of my Day 2 journey.

Stay tuned for Day 3! 

 

 

 

Edited September 13, 2023 by DylanSP

[DylanSP]

Day 3

Volcano Rim to Rim + Off-camera exploration

Spoiler

Day 3 was all about exploring the stratovolcano. I did not make any significant progress on my circumnavigation of Ike. It was all about having fun!

To start, here are some highlights of my off-camera exploration.

Here I am straddling a rim. Not the rim of the volcano as a whole, but what appeared to be the rim of a crater within the crater. I believe this indicates that an eruption must have happened later on, after the initial eruption that created the whole crater.

In the midground lies a mini-crater. It's very subtle, but if you look closely, the area my rover is over has an anomalous red tint to it. Try looking at the background, and back at the foreground, to notice a slightly warmer tint. I have not noticed this color difference anywhere else so far. Too bad Jeb didn't bring a geologist with him, because I have no idea what this means. Maybe it's volcanic-related? 

Another mini-crater. I found several of these mini-craters around the volcano. I know these craters are all volcanic-related because I never saw any craters out of the volcano's vicinity. I think there is a lack of meteor-caused craters because the volcanoes must have resurfaced the land at some point, similar to what happened on Venus.

Wow! The terrain here is just mind-blowing!

For such a small moon with no water or wind to support erosion, it is phenomenal how exciting the terrain is! I can only assume that millions of years of on-and-off lava flow must have created this extraterrestrial Grand Canyon!

Zoom out of the canyon.

Jeb decides to explore the lava canyon. This angle looks strikingly similar to the Horseshoe Bend.

The scale of the canyon is amazing.

Oh no! The rover is tumbling down the canyon! Jeb is doomed! I think this happened because the ship disengaged its brakes (and all control) when Jeb left the ship. I reloaded and pretended that didn't happen.

Don't worry Jeb. It was just a bad thought. You made it back in one piece and your rover is safe and sound.

What a big boulder!

Now to the actual journey! Here I begin my descent down from the southern rim. The descent brought a total of 1.5 kilometers down from the 9km high rim. I estimate that the lowest point of the crater is around 7km in elevation.

Zoom out in a portion of the volcanic crater along the journey. Notice how the ground is terrace-like, and there is an angled sub-crater. The cliff in the background is the northern rim, which is where I'm headed.

This is where my final destination for Day 3 is. To the right, you can see a channel that carves into the northern rim, most likely the result of lava flow. It also appears to be that the bottom of the channel is darker in color.

Shown below is my starting point and ending point for Day 3, aside from the off-track exploring of course!

And here is the footage of my rim-to-rim course.

And, lastly, here is the map of my progress so far! Not very much on the grand scale of things, but a lot of progress when it comes to exploration and discoveries. On Day 4 I will be skirting along to the western rim and making the dangerous journey down to the volcano base!

Stay tuned for Day 4!

 

Edited September 13, 2023 by DylanSP

[Socraticat]

That rover moves along nicely

 

[DylanSP]

Day 4

Volcano Descent + Ashfall region

Spoiler

On Day 4 I made my way down the volcano and also entered an ashfall region. 

Here are some of the highlights as I descended:

Here I begin straight away with a steep drop-off. The cliff got me going up to speed without any use of wheels. It dropped me 300 meters, but my initial velocity was low enough that unplanned disassembly was not at all a concern.

I planned to skirt to the western point of the rim, but I ended up parting ways from the rim once I got to the northwestern area. I wanted to skirt the rim because I was headed west, and since the slope on the northern side goes north, it would've been tedious to keep my rover from crashing due to the unfavorable angle. However, the volcano rim appears to be shaped more like an ellipse than a circle. So when I got to the northwestern point, starting the descent was favorable. 

Anyway, here is my last view of the volcano crater as I am getting ready to start the descent.

This is the last of being on the rim. It is from this point I will start the descent! I was so excited but also nervous! My elevation was 8k, and with the base being around 4k, I had a ton of elevation to lose. How hard the descent is will depend on how steep it is and how rugged the terrain is. 

As I began my descent, I saw the distant land, very far away, and a long way down.

Canyons galore! It didn't matter which way I went, I ended up in one sooner or later. This brutal terrain was hard, and I had my share of failures and plenty of close calls. The tough thing about canyons is I end up catching a lot of vacuum from the sudden drop-off. 

Well, it would be dishonest to say it was only a descent. It took a while to lose any significant elevation because I kept running into stuff like this. The northwestern side of the volcano slopes are very gradual, but still really steep. It's just a lot of ups and downs.

I did catch a break from the rugged terrain. But I still had a lot of descent ahead of me. My elevation in this shot is over 7k.

Sooner or later though, the rugged slopes would come back to haunt me again.

At this shot, my last significant drop was behind me, and my elevation was now 5.5k. At this point, I would say I'm at the base of the volcano, but higher than I expected. I was also in what appeared to be an ashfall region, the ground is subtly darker here!

Overall, the terrain was much flatter and the descent was essentially over.

Sometimes I encountered an occasional drop-off, but they were always canceled out by ascending terrain.

Here the darkening of the terrain became an obvious indicator of the ashfall from the volcano. Even at the end of Day 4's journey, my elevation stagnated at around 5k, but I was expecting it to further decrease to 4k like it was consistently the entire journey before reaching the volcano. 

At this point, Jeb had to wave goodbye to the gigantic stratovolcano. From here on out it will be smooth sailing! I will be heading to another volcano in the future. However, this next volcano seems more like a shield volcano than a stratovolcano. It doesn't have the iconic cone shape that the previous volcano had. Its crater also seems to have a proportionally larger size compared to the volcano I was at. We can also visibly see the ashfall region to the left. 

Without further ado, here is my progress map. I used a different map because I was too west to log it on the old map now. The previous segments of my journey are not shown, but when I complete my circumnavigation I will compile all the segments.

And here is the time-lapsed footage of my Day 4 journey down the volcano! I also have cool flips at 2:35!

Stay tuned for Day 5!

 

Edited September 13, 2023 by DylanSP

[DylanSP]

Day 5

Ravines and Cliffs

Spoiler

What I expected to be smooth sailing turned out to be sailing into a hurricane!

The land I first drove over was very similar to the land where I first landed. Nice and smooth with rolling hills and some occasional steep slopes here and there.

But then this turbulent terrain appeared as my rover made it over a hill! Not so peaceful anymore! In addition, my elevation dropped to the 4ks.

I had no idea I was about to drive off a cliff in this shot...

My rover is toast! That was pretty much a doomed fate when I saw I was flying over a super steep drop-off. I was already roving rather recklessly, with a speed of 30m/s. So there was no chance I would've survived. Load save!

So I had to turn my rover south to avoid certain death. 

Zoom out as I skirt the rim of the cliff. Also, notice all the canyons in the background. No matter where I turned I came across one, and honestly it became even worse than when I descended the volcano! I crashed more times than I care to admit. I have a suspicion that me being in the ashfall region may have something to do with it. After all, when I closely inspected the map of Ike, I did notice quite a few anomalies in terrain features other than darker ground. 

Notice the cliffs in the background that I was at in the previous shot. It was here that I realized what I navigated around was actually a crater! That was the first crater I found that wasn't associated with volcanic activity on Ike!

I saw many of these small but deadly ravines on Day 5's journey. The big threat here is that the drop-off causes me to catch vacuum and run straight into the ascending slope which, even at low speed wrecks my rover. 

Normally, catching vacuum isn't too much of a concern, because usually, I make contact with a descending slope, which is more parallel to my velocity, and thus it helps minimize the impact, but here, that is not the case.

Catching vacuum over a big ravine. Looks epic, but I faced certain death 5 seconds after this shot was taken.

With no practical way to survive the leap over the ravines, I had to resort to going slower, so I could give myself enough time to turn away from a ravine. In a few cases, I would encounter the start of a ravine, where I safely drove into the ravine and skirted along the valley floor. It proved to be safer and flatter than the terrain up above! This is exactly what highways like to do in real life. You seldom see a road straddling along a ridge or being situated on a really steep slope. If there is a canyon, you better bet a road will be there! 

Anyway, Jeb presses on through the rough terrain and the expedition continues!

Here is the footage of my Day 5 journey. I only kept the recordings where I didn't crash, so naturally this will only show the safest route I took.

And here is the map of my journey Day 4 to Day 5. There are a lot more points because I needed to stop and save more often due to the perilous terrain. It also allows my path to be documented more precisely. I had to initially turn south to avoid falling into the crater, but then I had to turn north to avoid climbing a steep cliff, which would've led to me falling off the steep cliff thereafter. I wanted to avoid ascending so I wouldn't have to descend. Anyhow, I will be leaving the ashfall region soon, so I hope that things may get a little bit less turbulent.  

Overall, I'm happy with the progress I made. I'm about halfway between the volcano I visited and the volcano I'm going to.

Stay tuned for Day 6!

 

 

 

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Edited September 13, 2023 by DylanSP

[DylanSP]

Day 6

Leaving Canyon Land, Entering Terrace Land

Spoiler

Day 6 I've made huge progress when it comes to distance traveled, thanks to the terrain becoming less dangerous (but still not ideal).

I was still in canyon land at the start of Day 6.

Look at that isolated plateau! Reminds me of Arizona!

Many canyons in the distance.

Zoom out of the area.

But that's it for canyons. On the map, I was pretty much out of the ashfall region, and the upcoming terrain looked much smoother. 

Although I'll miss canyon land, I'm just glad I can speed up to 20 m/s without a worry. In this shot, I was speeding at 30 m/s. That's over 60mph. For otherworldly off-roading, that's pretty insane!

However, Ike decided to throw a bunch of speed bumps at me, enforcing the speed limit of only 15 m/s. I couldn't go any faster because the step-like terrain made me catch too much vacuum to get any more speed.  Not sure if this is a bug or just a strange development choice by the devs. 

Another crater sighting.

Parking atop a cliff. The terrain my rover overlooks is back to being rugged, and my next volcano destination is just up ahead to the right! This is where I finished the Day 6 journey.

Zoom out of the area.

Jeb goes on another little space walk on Ike.

Jeb got some amazing views of the landscape!

Jeb makes a funny face.

Not again! Jeb returns to his rover to find it spontaneously disassembled and launching up in the air.

She lost her rear wheels, got 200 meters above the ground, and then fell back down. As she tumbled down I eventually got a catastrophic failure. I expected something like that to happen so I saved before doing this. I would say that's a bug. Overall, the game seems to get glitchy when it comes to zooming out or getting far away from the rover through EVA. 

Footage of my Day 6 journey:

Here is the progress map for Day 4 - Day 6! We can see I am getting close to the volcano on the left side. At this point, including Day 1 - Day 3, I think I've covered roughly 1/3 of Ike's circumference! However, my trail will probably take longer because I plan to change my latitude a lot for the sake of exploration.

Stay tuned for Day 7, where I will be approaching, and climbing (if time allows) the second volcano of my expedition around Ike!

 

Edited September 13, 2023 by DylanSP

[DylanSP]

Day 7

Climbing Volcano #2 + Minor Bug

Spoiler

Day 7 was pretty eventful in terms of exploration.

First, I'd like to provide more on the terraced terrain I saw from Day 6. It was initially thought to be related to a terrain issue that involved having an integrated graphics card, however, that was later proven to not be the case as I use a dedicated GPU.  Because of that, this seems to be a bug that no one has reported yet. Though it is fair to wonder if the devs just went above and beyond, the terraced terrain is actually an intentional feature where layers of the lava flow cooled down, which was then covered with regolith. However, it occurred in areas very far away from any stratovolcanoes, so I'm not fully buying into it. Let me know what you guys think about it in my bug report down below.

Without further ado, let's get into the highlights! 

First I began by flying down a cliff!

Catching vacuum in a canyon.

Unlike the terraced terrain, I can be much more certain that this ridge is a terrain glitch.

Making my way up out of a canyon.

Getting up close to the volcano!

Upon inspection by zooming out, I would like to correct myself from the other post when I said it was a shield volcano. Here the volcano exhibits a conical shape, so it is a stratovolcano.

Catching an insane amount of vacuum as I rolled off an unforeseen drop-off. I was 90% sure the rover would get destroyed on landing, but miraculously it survived!

 The base of the volcano started here.

Zoom out  of the area

The speck near the cliff rim is my rover as it makes the climb up the rugged slopes.

Look at how steep this slope is! This volcano was a lot steeper than the previous one I climbed.

Hooray! I made it to the top of the crater rim! The elevation is around 8k, but the cliff you see to the left was around 9k, so it was around the same height as the previous volcano. One major difference I see right of the bat is that the crater is a lot more defined. It's easier to identify where the rim is, and the terrain is much smoother and less turbulent than the previous volcano. Perhaps this would suggest that the volcano has erupted more recently relative to the other volcano. Also, the ground has a slightly darker tone.

Jeb going on another EVA adventure!

The crater has some interesting light and dark contrast here. 

Approaching the peak of the volcano's rim.

Here is one of the breathtaking views Jeb saw. The whole crater is easily recognizable from up here!

Another amazing view done the slopes. Notice how the land near the horizon has a much brighter tone. That is where the ashfall region ends!

Again, I am experiencing bugs when it comes to EVA. I came back and the ship just fell through the ground. This has already been reported.

Other than that it was a breathtaking adventure! Also am hyped for the upcoming update! Can't wait to see what improvements are made! Maybe they'll make my roving adventure around Ike just a little bit better. Now here is the footage of my Day 7 journey!

And finally here is the map showing progress for Days 4-7.

Stay tuned for Day 8!

 

Edited September 13, 2023 by DylanSP

[DylanSP]

Day 8

Volcano #2 Rim to Rim + Descent 

Spoiler

I had a fair collection of bugs on Day 8, one being pretty severe.

First off, I began my descent into the volcano's crater. Overall, it was a smooth descent that had no danger at all, contrary to the first volcano. Although I would admit that should I have done the descent on the steep cliff in the background, it would've been a different story.

In the middle of the crater! There is little to no rough terrain at all. If anything this is the smoothest portion of terrain I encountered since Day 1! Just a huge flat expanse of what used to be a celestial lava fountain.

The cliffs in the background are impressive, to say the least. I would judge from my EVA exploration on Day 7 that the angle got as steep as 60 degrees in some places!

Making my way out of the crater.

Out of the crater and back to cliffs and ravines! The slopes proved more challenging to traverse than the first volcano's slopes. I kept crashing no matter which direction I randomly went. In the end, I had no choice but to zoom out and find the safest possible path to travel. Well, I guess I can't complain because pathfinding is one of the primary tasks a rover is supposed to handle. My rover already does absurd things compared to the Curiosity and Percy rovers. It's not like you'd see them travel 40mph and fly off a cliff!

Yeah... I don't think this is something Curiosity and Percy would do. I plummeted into the canyon reaching a top mid-air speed of 40m/, which is like 80mph! I don't know how but my rover landed without a dent. But it was all in vain because 1 minute later I crashed for real.

Lots of cliffs and hidden drop-offs ahead.

Here I'm trying to hold on to the cliff face for dear life! I survived but again I crashed not too long after.

Unforeseen drop-offs are pretty much responsible for all my failures. The rover hit the cliff face head-on at 50m/s, no chance I would've survived.

But eventually, I had a run that overcame it all, and the volcano finally gave me a break.

Sliding down the (relatively) safe slopes.

Duna overlooks my rover as it flies above the slopes.

And this is where a major glitch happened. I loaded a save after a failure and subsequently, the whole rover fell through the ground and into the center of Ike, then, like an actual orbital trajectory, it shot me back up towards the surface, and I flew pretty dang high up. Great view from up here! But I hope this bug gets fixed in the future.

Jeb had a weird dream last night, but anyway, he continued to rolled down the slopes of the volcano!

Rolling my way into a canyon. 

Another glitch.

At this point, I reached the base of the volcano! Volcano #2 is complete! 

Day 8 video of my journey!

Progress map for Day 8. I am not in the center of the dark ashfall region. I am headed towards the twin crater volcano you can see down below!

Stay tuned for Day 9!

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 13, 2023 by DylanSP

[DylanSP]

Day 9

Steep Cliff and More Ravines

Spoiler

It was relatively similar to Day 5.

I started off rolling my way down some hills. Eventually, this landed me at around 4k meters.

Coming up on turbulent terrain up ahead.

Here I encountered a very steep cliff. 

Zoom out of the area.

Jeb investigates the cliff. His findings were that the cliff had a total height of 500 meters above the ground. Impressive!

Great view from up here! Also miraculously, my rover finally stayed in one piece and didn't fall through the ground during the EVA. That's a first!

Catching vacuum as I pass over the rim of the cliff.

Up ahead was terrain fairly similar to that of the volcanos. I wanted to climb to the top, but the terrain got too unpredictable, so I turned south of it to find much more tame ground.

But not tame for long. It was still quite the hassle. Canyons make a comeback here.

Pretty cool land features up ahead. It's like a plateau. 

As I climbed up the hills I found myself roving my way through a lot of ravines.

Zoom out of the area I was at. It almost resembles the way rivers work. I see a main ravine with a bunch of smaller branches leading into it from higher elevations. Since there's obviously no water on Ike, the only feasible explanation for this land feature is that lava flow in the past ate its way through the ground to make channels. Since I'm nowhere near any stratovolcanoes, this is pretty good evidence that volcanic activity was not just limited to the iconic stratovolcanoes we know and love.

Here I hug a cliff as I wrapped up my last stretch of roving for Day 9.

And that is all the highlights of Day 9. Here is the footage of it.

And finally here is the progress map for my Day 8-9 journey. I've certainly covered a lot of ground for these days, as I've made improvements in my rover driving skills. So that sets me up to climb the next volcano I'm on the doorstep of. I'm particularly excited because the volcano appears to have 2 craters overlapping each other! Overall, it seems all these volcanoes have their unique aspect and personality to them. I absolutely do not regret choosing to go on detours to explore and conquer these volcanoes. It's adding a lot of purpose and enjoyment to my journey to circumnavigate Ike!

Stay tuned for Day 10! I know the next major update got delayed, but hopefully, it will come out by the time I get to that.

 

Edited September 13, 2023 by DylanSP

[DylanSP]

Day 10

Climbing Volcano #3 + 1st Rim to Rim 

Spoiler

I finally went about Day 10, It's been a while, but I got around to it after the update.

In the background the third volcano emerges over the horizon.

The climb begins.

Zoom out of the volcano that I am climbing.  The crater to the left is the one I am approaching. Also it appears to have a higher elevation than the volcano to the right.

As I gain more and more elevation, the slopes get more and more steep and I have to plan my route to go the least steep path.

The view is getting great up here!

Going up a canyon in the volcano.

Making it over a ledge! But there is still a significant amount of rise ahead!

After a tough climb, I make it to the rim, where my rover overlooks the first crater of the twin volcano.

Going out on an EVA mission to investigate the crater. The crater is so small it is super easy to identify where the rim is, making it look really iconic.

Making my way to a really steep portion of the rim.

Getting to the other side of the crater. 

In the end, my rover fell through the ground again upon return, so as of this update it is still not resolved. If I'm being honest the update doesn't really address anything that affected me on this expedition. Anyway, I begin the descent down the crater rim.

After reaching the bottom my rover hit a hill and since it built up so much speed it went flying really high! It was amazing but then I had catastrophic failure, so next time I just went down with the engine first to keep my speed tame.

View of the crater behind me.

Overall the crater was pretty straightforward and nothing was too notable compared to the others, besides it being a lot smaller. In the picture below I came to a stop backwards and we can see the second crater behind me, which I will go into for Day 11. It looks even more simple than the first crater of the volcano.

Here's the video of the Day 10 Journey.

And here's the map of the journey Day 8 - Day 10.

Stay tuned for Day 11!

 

Edited September 13, 2023 by DylanSP

[DylanSP]

Day 11

Twin Volcano 2nd Rim to Rim/Descent + Ashfall Region

Spoiler

I've had less spare time now that summer's over so I'm getting a day of progress weekly instead of every 3 days.

Anyway, time to explore the second crater of the twin volcano!

First I make my descent. It was much smoother than the first crater, and in addition, it had a much lower elevation than the other crater, being roughly a kilometer low in elevation. Overall it was much simpler and I didn't need to take any precautions in this crater.

Very smooth crater with an interesting pale floor.

Making the ascent out of the crater. 

Reaching the rim of the lower crater, which sat at around 7km elevation.

Time for the volcano descent! The ground is a long way down, and this was the steepest descent yet! 

It was very dangerous and I crashed multiple times, and for 90% of the descent my wheels were off the ground, no matter how much I braked.

At this time I was grounded again, but there were more steep drop-offs ahead.

In no time I made it back down to the floor, and the volcano was behind me.

Now that I left the volcano, I was in the ashfall region, and as always, there were canyons and plateaus.

 

Crater sighting.

Terrace-like terrain ahead. This is definitely intentional and is an amazing sign of volcanic activity in the past.

Zoom out of the area. 

Approaching a canyon.

At this point I called it a day, but here is a cool cliff feature I saw while zooming out to see nearby terrain.

Video of Day 11.

Progress Map for Day 7-Day 11. I am currently heading west out of the ashfall region. I will eventually head into another ashfall region, and far out there is another volcano  I want to climb.

Stay tuned for Day 12!

 

[DylanSP]

Day 12

Canyon Land Returns + New Terrain Glitch

Spoiler

Day 12 was relatively uneventful in turns of milestones or discoveries, but I covered a lot of ground and found a few notable things.

To get started, I came downhill to find an expansive canyon system!

Views from the valley floor.

After that was an expansive stretch of flat land for as far as the eye could see (mostly)

But out of the blue, I encountered this really pointy ridge. I wouldn't necessarily call it a bug but it is definitely an anomaly.

And back into another maze of canyons!

Zoom out of the area. Again, it's pretty easy to tell how all the lava-carved ravines meet up to form a main lava bed on the valley floor. Really nice attention to detail.

After that, I was out of canyon land, and it was another wide stretch of flat land.

But then I encountered another weird ridge, which was definitely a terrain glitch this time.

And this is where I end Day 12! 

Video footage of the Day 12 journey.

Journey map of Day 8 - Day 12. At this point, I am probably near the halfway point of my journey to circumnavigate Ike!

I will most likely be climbing my 4th volcano for the upcoming day of travel. So stay tuned for Day 13 (hopefully the day doesn't live up to Thirteen's reputation)!

 

[DylanSP]

Day 13

Climbing The 4th Volcano

Spoiler

Day 13 was exciting, with lots of notable terrain features, and a particularly interesting stratovolcano.

The journey started off with a climb that ascended above the valley floor.

Then back down into the valley.

And out of the valley once again.

Skirting around a steep slope.

This speaks for itself, really.

Overall, the terrain started off fairly tame, so I was safe to cruise at high speeds.

Never mind! I was approaching this terraced cliff at such high speeds I was not able to turn out of the way or stop in time, so I had no choice but to run up it like a ramp. I was honestly almost certain this would be the end. It would shoot me off so high in the vacuum that I would crash after landing on the rim.

The moment of truth as I make the leap of faith. Here I jumped  over one terrace, but the next one is still ahead of me. My slim chance of survival would be the Goldilocks zone, where I wasn't too low where I'd ram into the cliff face and get destroyed, nor too high where I'd overshoot the rim and crash land.

In the end, I managed to hit the sweet spot, and I survived in one piece. Here the sharp point in the center is the next volcano that I am approaching.

Getting closer!

As I transitioned onto the base of the volcano, we can already see the land behind me is down below.

Making my way into one of the volcano's lava channels.

The steep climb begins!

The horizon is getting lower!

As I jumped over a ridge, the view became spectacular, but there was still quite a ways up! I decided to call it a day here. I'll finish climbing the volcano the next day.  

Video of the journey so far.

And here's the map of my journey from Day 8 to Day 13! Stay tuned for Day 14, where I will summit the volcano and traverse the caldera!

 

Edited October 6, 2023 by DylanSP

[Socraticat]

I admire your persistence.

I'm glad the journey started and I am excited to hear and see more of it!

[DylanSP]

Day 14

Over 10,000 Meter Elevation!

Spoiler

Hello everyone! Day 14 was an interesting day, to say the least. It took two days of playing in real life because I failed a lot, but let's pretend it's just one day for documentation.

I start off by making some more elevation gain. What I find interesting about this volcano is that in this picture I'm about as high up as I would normally be at the top of a volcano, but here I still have a ways to go!

Getting higher, the slope was relatively tame here.

Here I made my way into a lava channel.

 

And now the slope was getting dangerous as I neared the top! The curvature is getting really easy to notice!

I am nearing the top of the volcano here, and my elevation came out to be over 10,000 kilometers! Nowhere close to as high as Olympus Mons, but still impressive.

I planned to skirt around the rim, so I wasn't planning on entering the caldera, so I decided to do an EVA mission to check it out.

I decided to mess around and fall down the volcano slopes. 

I was expecting the whole operation to be the end for Jeb because he reached 150 m/s before crashing down on the volcano base! There's no way Jeb could've possibly survived such a high-speed landing, but I guess a bug saved him, because he landed with no injuries, and was ready to climb thousands of meters up the volcano back to the rover. Just kidding! I reloaded, as that would take forever.

My first approach to go back down the volcano was to skirt around the northern rim, but then I ended up gaining too much momentum, and I rolled down the slope prematurely. It's a pretty nice-looking shot though.

Now this is where the consequence happens. I am stuck on a really steep slope, fighting against the momentum. If I continued going down, I would be bound to crash, so I turned sideways and made an effort to get out of the steep slope. It felt similar to how one caught in a rip current has to swim sideways to get out. In the end, though, it was to no avail, I crashed.

Next, I tried to go straight into the caldera and go straight out, but after gaining lots of momentum, I encountered a little ridge in the center, which shot me ridiculously high in the air. I crashed on landing.

The third time's the charm! I skirted the southern rim this time, And so far it was looking good!

 

At this point, I decided to leave the rim, and begin the descent.

A similar thing happened to the first attempt, only even steeper, and it was dark. I'm trying to keep my wheels on the ground for dear life.

In the end, I made it off okay, and I continued down the slope.

Luckily, the rest of the descent was smooth sailing. But I did notice a strange ridge.

Finally, my elevation was back down to 4k, and there was no more altitude to lose.

Here lies the last of Day 14. Jeb gets a good view of the volcano as he continues his journey!

Time-lapse footage of the Day 14 Journey.

And finally, here is the map for Day 14. The next volcano I am traveling to is the dark spot near the lower side of Ike. After that, I think I will have been past the halfway point on my journey to circumnavigate Ike! I can't wait to put all the maps together so I can see what the whole journey looks like!

Stay tuned for Day 15!

 

Edited October 15, 2023 by DylanSP

[DylanSP]

Day 15

Smooth Sailing (Mostly)

Spoiler

Hello everyone! Day 15 is what I call smooth sailing. There were very few areas where I had to plan my route, I just kept going straight and sped off with little worry!

I start off by making my way back into a basin, where the elevation dropped down to 4,000-meter elevation.

Another crater in the background.

Smooth sailing!

Though the land started getting more turbulent, it didn't become bad enough of an issue that I had to change me course.

Terrain bug.

This is where the exception to "smooth sailing" is. I was approaching a canyon that was too deep to safely descend into, but I was oblivious and cocky at the time.

As expected, I crashed, but I noticed something interesting after I came back after the update. There was dust coming off the ground as the rover moved!

The next area was still relatively tame,  but the land was more turbulent.

And this is where Day 15 came to an end.

Here's the timelapse of the Day 5 Journey!

And finally, here is the progress map for Days 14-15. I am now heading to my 5th volcano: which has a remarkably wide caldera!

Stay tuned for Day 16, when I'll be summiting the next volcano!

 

Edited October 28, 2023 by DylanSP

[Petra34]

it's amazing

[DylanSP]

Day 16

Highest Volcano Yet!

Spoiler

Hi everyone! I am back and am ready to show more of Ike!

First off, the volcano I'm heading to is already on the horizon, which really helped with navigation to get there.

Getting closer...

I noticed the southern side was significantly higher than the northern side. For this reason, I targeted the southern side, because my goal is to summit the volcano, not merely reach the rim.

Approaching the base of the stratovolcano...

At this point, I had to make a turn to the right to avoid running into a steep cliff that would've shot me into the vacuum and then crash.

The climb begins!

As I got higher and higher, I noticed the curvature of Ike emerged.

\

But holy moly did the volcano scrape into space! I was so high but there was still more to go!

Before I show you all the absolutely spectacular view, here is a zoom-out of the caldera of the stratovolcano. It is the widest caldera out of all the volcanoes so far!

After summiting the rim, I reached an elevation of 10500 meters! This might be one of my favorite screenshots I've gotten of the journey! It's so high up that the surface floor resembles how the surface appears in low Ike orbit. In addition, we can see a peak in the background. That is another volcano!

Video of the journey.

Map of the journey from Day 14 to Day 16. After this volcano, I plan to press onward until I reach the ashfall region to the west!

 

Stay tuned for Day 17!

 

Edited November 6, 2023 by DylanSP

[Socraticat]

So satisfying to watch that rover eat hills like snacks.

Edited November 7, 2023 by Socraticat

[DylanSP]

Day 17

Toughest Part of the Journey

Spoiler

Hi everyone! To say this only took one day of playing was really a lie because I struggled to keep the rover from falling apart as it tumbled down the stratovolcano. But I wasn't just going to document Day 17 with just 15 continuous minutes of progress, so I had to improvise. If I do another circumnavigation mission, I'll probably organize my journey differently. Without further ado, here are the highlights!

Since I already had a good idea of what to expect in a caldera, I decided not to go through the rigorous task of rolling my rover into the crater, so instead I just explored with EVA which was 10 times easier. The cool thing about this particular volcano is that the caldera is very large in diameter and it bottoms out at around 5k, which is roughly 6k below the top of the rim! Very steep cliffs and high elevation differences are the unique characteristics of this volcano.

I decided to have a little fun and explore a different volcano that was nearby. Surprisingly, I actually had enough monopropellant to make the journey.

Beautiful view of the volcano Jeb is departing from!

View from further away, above the slopes of the nearby volcano, still going strong with fuel remaining!

After making it to the nearby volcano, I noticed the rim and crater were much less defined than any other volcano I visited. In this picture, it is hard to tell but Jeb is overlooking the volcano's caldera.

Anyway, now the actual journey begins. My initial plan was to skirt the rim until I make my way to the western side, but the problem was that the cliff was too steep and my rover kept getting sucked in like a black hole, which is happening in this picture, it did not have enough power to fight the downward slopes. And even worse since it is so steep and far down, my rover always reached the point of no return and it reaches dangerously fast speeds and crashes. So this approach proved to be too difficult.

My only other option was to head south down the slopes, then turn westward once I got down into the valley between the volcanos. But this would prove to be challenging because this volcano is more steep and turbulent than the others.

Cool land feature.

Going down was an absolute mess. I crashed an uncountable amount of times. I limit saving to once per 15 minutes because that is how long I want each clip of my video timelapse to be, but even just 15 minutes is enough to make progress super slow. But I wasn't going to quit, and besides, I felt like saving every second would ruin the spirit of this challenge.

Catching vacuum was very fun, but whenever I did I knew it was basically a sentence to death.

Eventually, I got down to the valley floor and I finally had a nice breath of fresh air.

The valley was still 6k, so as I traveled west I still had a little elevation to lose, but it was relatively easy.

And that was it! I'm so glad I got through the worst! Here's a video of a non-failure journey, which took forever to get.

And here is the map of my journey.

 

Stay tuned for Day 18!

 

[DylanSP]

Day 18

Flat Stretches of Land

Spoiler

Hello everyone! I am so excited about the new major update coming in 2 days from the time of this post! In contrast to Day 17, this day went on much more smoothly. 

To recap, that volcano in the background is the one I descended from.

I get a good jump off a little cliff as I skirt my way around the volcano to continue west.

At this point, I made it back down to roughly 4k elevation. Seeing as most of Ike is around this elevation, it makes me curious where the lowest point on Ike is, or if I will ever even get in the 3k or lower range on this mission. but since there is no elevation map of Ike, I don't think there is a way to know where the lowest (or highest) points of Ike are without brute forcing it, as the game is right now. Maybe after I'm done with the circumnavigation mission, I'll occasionally come back to move around and explore, just to find some extreme points and cool landmarks. 

Honestly, I usually have at least one cool land feature to talk about in a Day report, but today I don't have anything, but that doesn't make it any less interesting. The super flat vast expanses of land made it really easy, and was a nice breath of fresh air. Day 17 was the hardest, and this day is the easiest. The beginning was a bit turbulent, but afterward, it was pretty straightforward.

As the volcano I descended from was the highest yet, it is super prominent. I've traveled for so long but it refuses to hide behind the horizon! Though to be fair the land is so flat there are no hills to obscure it.

Honestly, after a bit of a stressful end to the year, I just needed to relax, and so roving along this flat tame area was needed more than ever. I appreciate how immersive and serene this game feels! I can just picture myself in that rover thinking about nothing but what is around me. Nothing to be preoccupied with, just being present in the moment.

I don't have too much more to say. It's been a quiet and peaceful day.

Now I've traveled stupidly far from the volcano, and if I've done the math right, based on my educated guess on my average speed and the time I spent playing, I've traveled roughly 70 kilometers from the volcano, but it still is showing up as a little spike in the horizon to the left. Give this volcano a medal for being such a prominent land feature! And remarkably that is where Day 18 comes to an end, so I will expect a few more glimpses of the volcano on Day 19! 

Video of the Day 19 journey.

Map of the journey from Day 14 to Day 18. It visualizes just how far I am from the volcano, making the fact that it is still in view a stunning accomplishment. I believe there are even higher volcanos on Ike though, so this isn't even the best example. Overall though, the sheer prominence of the volcanos relative to Ike's small diameter is pretty amazing, and very notable on the map, as you can easily see how they tower off the ground below. Then again though, maybe it's not too surprising since there is less gravity and virtually no erosion. Anyway, I am going to continue west to complete my circumnavigation!

I will explore the science update when it comes out, but I'll be sure to stay loyal to this mission, and I'll always come back to it. Stay tuned for Day 19, and Happy Holidays!