Best place to change inclination?

[tuguley]

What is the best place to change inclination of my orbit? Closer to the gravity source or further away?

Or does it not matter at all because I am not changing my velocity? (theoretically)

An example of when I would encounter this problem is when intercepting Jool and performing an aero-capture, I am left with a highly elliptical orbit around Jool.

And more often that not, it is at an undesirable inclination for intercepting Jool's satellites.

So the question is, without circularizing my orbit at the desired Moon's alltitude, where is the best place perform my inclination correction burn, at the peri or apoapsis?

As a side note, I have landed on all the planets and their satellites, I'm just looking to see if there is a slightly more efficient way intercept orbits of other satellites.

[Nibb31]

It is more economical to change inclination when you are higher up. It is even sometimes worth spending fuel to raise your apoapsis, change your inclination, and lower your apoapsis again. This also means that the best place to do your burn is the moment when you enter the planet's SOI.

However, you also want to do the burn at the point where you want your new inclination to be. For example, if you want an equatorial orbit, you need to do you plane change at the point where your current orbit crosses the equator.

[tuguley]

Ah alright thanks. Suspected that to be the answer.

[SpeedDaemon]

If you have your conics limit higher than the default (so you can see future solar orbits prior to capture), try adjusting for your equatorial orbit about 10 days before you enter the SOI. Try to get the future orbit as flat as possible from way out there, since it takes extremely small amounts of fuel (RCS is sufficient, in some cases). Since even small errors will have a huge effect on the future orbit, if you can get it mostly flat, you should be pretty darn close to equatorial after you capture.

[RoboRay]

If adjusting your inclination to match another object's orbital inclination, you want to do it at a crossing-node, where your orbits meet when viewed edge-on.

As to adjusting it after aerocapture, you can set your inclination before aerobraking by aligning your trajectory along the desired inclination. Assuming you enter the destination SOI in the plane of the ecliptic, the latitude of your periapsis will be pretty much your orbital inclination after departing the atmosphere.

Edited October 12, 2012 by RoboRay

[TheDarkStar]

When I change planes, the way I think about it is that where I am on the orbit and the opposite point form an axis that the rest rotates around.