Moons of Jool Mission Update:

[Landge]

It's certainly been tough to complete this mission started in 0.19 since 0.20 came out. I will be starting from scratch with 0.20 release once I'm finished with this series of missions.

Moons of Jool mission update:

The 1st to arrive. Fuel Tanker MR-1 has a close encounter with Laythe on the way to Jool...

Timewarp through Laythe intercept nodes causes havoc with the projected Jool Pe of 125,000m. Each time throwing me too deep into the Joolian atmosphere. I had to reload several times before I realised Timewarp was at the heart of the problem. Probably due to rounding errors while speeding up time. NOTE: Make sure to not to exceed 2x while crossing transition points to maintain the same trajectory as before the encounter.

Aerobraking in Jool's Atmosphere...

Is great at slowing ships down enough to capture an orbit around Jool without expending a lot of fuel.

Orbital trajectory is adjusted to intercept with Pol...

Pol is the outermost moon in Joolian orbit and is the destination of MR-1. The rest of the fleet can be seen in the distance just days away.

Firing rockets in retrograde to circularize orbit around Pol...

I intended on an equatorial orbit but not wanting to waste a lot of fuel adjusting the MR-1's orbit is not quite polar either.

Oh well. We did pass within 4km of an old friend. The Pol MapSat satellite can be seen in the distance.

Undocking the Mini-Rover 1...

Why are there parachutes on a lander that is landing on an airless planet? I forgot to take them off during the build. Doh!

Since Pol has very little gravity I decided to transfer most of the rover's fuel to the tanker to be used later. Staging, seen on the left, is all lumped together and has to be reorganized before firing the rockets. Hope that get's fixed in the new release.

Descending to Pol...

Jool and Laythe can be seen in the background.

2500m and dropping...

Quick easy bursts of the rockets is all it takes to descend as light as a feather.

Touchdown...

The 1st umanned ship to land safely on the surface of one Jool's moons.

Undocking the Rover...

Time for a little exploration.

View of the Sun Kerbol...

Somewhere way off in the distance is Kerbin.

Examining the Peculiar Rock Formations...

(To be continued...)

The full mission (still in progress) can be seen here Moons of Jool Missions.

[Landge]

Mods, please move this to Mission Reports forum.