Need to send a sat into a Kolniya Orbit of Eve

[martinvanzyl]

In my first dip into interplanetary waters the game sends me this contract.

I need to put a satellite with science gizmos on it in a crazy eccentric orbit that is completely new to me, a Kolniya orbit.

Apo: 12,365,504 meters

Per: 129,500 meters

Inc: 63,4 deg

LAN: 31.4 deg

AP: 270 deg

The problem I'm having is that when I create a maneuver within the transfer window and inspect how I'll arrive at Eve, that I'll always arrive going in the wrong direction for the orbit requirements. Fudging and advancing the Orbit and Time of the Kerbin escape within that window, gets me to the other side of Eve, but still not going in the right direction.

It doesn't seem like it's possible to send this sat in the transfer window to arrive properly. I can imagine you could maybe do it with grav slingshots? - but that is way out my ballpark at the moment. Any advice or ideas?

[king of nowhere]

it's not difficult, actually. what helps you is that changing inclination is very cheap when you are in a high, slow orbit. so, you arrive in the wrong direction. I assume, using your picture as a reference, that you would like to arrive from above or below, so you'd get captured with the right inclination, and instead you'll arrive from the right or left. it's ok, the important thing is that periapsis will be roughly where it should be in the target orbit.

so, get captured around eve, in a high elliptic orbit, with periapsis roughly in the right place. this should give you a planar node in the high part of the orbit. use that for the plane change, and it will be cheap. less than 200 m/s over an ideal capture.

alterntively, if you can't get captured with a periapsis close to the target one, still no despair. get captured into a elliptic orbit, then at periapsis make a burn to reach your target orbit. how do you make that burn? pretty simple; just point in the direction of apoapsis on the target orbit. use radial and normal components liberally, by trial and error. the idea is that the ship is going slowly, so you can cheaply enough override its orbital speed and send it to cross your target orbit. you will then need then another similar burn once you intercept the target orbit, and this will be a lot more expensive. probably 200 to 400 m/s for the first burn, and 1000 or so for the second. it would add 1500 m/s to your fuel budget, not ideal but not tragic.

i would like to post some screenshots of similar maneuvers I made, but I am using a limited connection right now; still, i can point out some of my mission reports linked in my signature. in the dream big mission, as well as the bolt mission, there are some maneuvers posted on how to reach gilly for a low cost despite large differences in inclination. reaching gilly is basically the same as reaching apoapsis on your target orbit. in one of those reports i even left the maneuver node open so one could see the radial, normal and prograde/retrograde. both times in the early chapter, as eve was the first interplanetary destination in those grand tours. perhaps most helpful to you, in the a'twin mission I had basically your same problem when coming back to the moons of Uranus from Neptune; should be around the end of chapter 15, the subchapter about returning to Uranus. there I discuss and explain with some detail how I got there, despite having an unfavorable approach and being unable to put periapsis on the right side. I still ended up spending quite a substantial amount of deltaV, but maneuvers in the real solar system are much more expensive.