First Mission to Jool

[PDCWolf]

I've been playing KSP for long but never got the chance to actually go to Jool (or Moho, Dres, or Eeloo) because I tend to roleplay a lot as in emulating a progress timeline of, for example, achieving orbit, then sending people, then going to Mün, and do the same and on and on, and by the time I get to do big objectives a new version comes in and I feel the need to start again with the "new technologies" each one includes (the parts obviously).

As this is my first mission to Jool, I decided I would document it as well.

We started by launching a modified version of the Skynet system, the modifications include 6 liquid fuel asparagused long-reach boosters instead of the 4 solid fuel original boosters, and a bigger fuel tank for the LV-N stage that, according to our engineers, would be enough to reach jool, do any required orbital maneuver, separate the JRO (Jool Reconnaissance Orbiter) and deorbit itself into Jool atmosphere to register the temperatures and pressures of such a wonderful body.

The nuclear stage completes the circularization LKO burn so that no debris are left on orbit. Then it's that same stage that does the ejection and correction burns. Approximately 200 days later we see Jool for the first time (at least when playing on 1280 x 720), it's 5 pixels big. Watch this one in fullscreen please, it's a gif. Just click it to enlarge.

At this point we corrected our trajectory so that we got exactly a 126km periapsis at Jool. Now we had to wait for another 100 days. When we were close enough, Jool received us with this beautiful view of itself with Laythe and Vall at a side.

Now, to save fuel, we aerobraked multiple times at Jool's atmosphere. This was the scariest part as not only the periapsis was on the dark side, but also our satellite had to retract its solar panels so that they wouldn't be ripped apart by the dynamic pressure and we only had 200 units of electrical power.

Right after the dyn. press. decreased we extended our solar panels once more, turned into retrograde and did a burn to reach our desired orbit: A retrograde orbit between Laythe and Vall.

After the circularization came the separation and deorbit of the nuclear stage, but something strange happened...

The map view forgot to told me about an encounter with laythe, which added loads of speed to our deorbiting little nuclear rocket, and got it on a stable orbit again... at least till they encountered again, adding more velocity. This happened multiple times till the nuclear stage got into a really eccentric orbit around Kerbol.

About our satellite... well, it's happily orbiting on a perfect equatorial retrograde orbit, getting 2 close ups to both Laythe and Vall on each orbital period.

The next planned missions include atmospheric probes to drop on Jool, a Polar orbiting satellite, and after that, it will be time to investigate its moons.

Edited May 8, 2013 by PDCWolf

[DChurchill]

Started my first Jool mission last night. Jeb is orbiting at 1,200 km waiting for me to get home from work. I have an almost full FL-T800 fuel tank sitting on top of an LV-N engine. I'm confidant of a safe return to Kerbin. Jeb, however, has seen me work and doesn't share my enthusiasm.

[PDCWolf]

Started my first Jool mission last night. Jeb is orbiting at 1,200 km waiting for me to get home from work. I have an almost full FL-T800 fuel tank sitting on top of an LV-N engine. I'm confidant of a safe return to Kerbin. Jeb, however, has seen me work and doesn't share my enthusiasm.

just watch out for the moons, you don't want to end like my nuclear stage.