How to land on Mün or any planet to specific place

[RussaX]

I want to learn landing to specific place. I want to build something on another planet or make a colony but I have problems with landing on specific place because I create my orbit to go on specific place + take care about retroburn altitude but I'm still landing about 10 kilometers away from place where I want to land. So if anyone have some suggestions how to do it right.(sure with fuel save)

[Syhrus]

It depends which body you're trying to land on, and whether is has an atmosphere. The way I like to do it is to fly very low (again it depends on the body, but for Mun I usually use about 5km) over where I want to land and then burn retrograde until I'm falling straight down. From there, it's not too hard to adjust your trajectory and land where you want to. This is by no means the most efficient way to do it, you can use epic maths skills to make it so that you only need to pass over your landing site by 1 or 2km, but that's less reliable.

If there is an atmosphere, it's a bit harder. Perhaps someone with a bit more experience landing on such places can help us out?

[CalculusWarrior]

I have a giant checklist on how to land, I'll see if I can find it.

EDIT: ​There you go, enjoy! Note that this is for a non-atmospheric body, such as the Mun, and it assumes that your lander of choice has a TWR of greater than 1 (i.e. you will slow down when you apply thrust in the opposite direction of your motion).

1. Quicksave. As soon as you achieve orbit around the Mun, locate your F5 key. Press it to quicksave. If at any time you feel like you've screwed up the descent, simply hold F9 and you will be transported back in time and space to the moment where you initially quicksaved.
   
2. Locate your landing spot of choice. An ideal landing site will be well-lit, not on the side of a mountain, and optionally on the side of the Mun facing Kerbin so you can see it in the sky.
   
3. Execute your deorbit burn.This bit requires a bit of trial-and-error. You can either burn on the opposite side of the Mun to your landing spot, expending the least amount of fuel possible, or you could burn directly over your site, killing all horizontal velocity. Ideally, you want a mixture of the two, as the former requires you to kill a lot of velocity on your final approach, and the latter eats up a lot of fuel. I find a good balance is to burn retrograde when your lander is approximately 45 degrees away from your landing site, but feel free to experiment. In the end, you want your orbit to be intersecting the ground a little further out from your landing zone.
   
4. Coast down towards your landing site. This part requires you to be on the ball. You don't want to start braking too high up, but neither do you want to try to burn when you're 500 metres above the ground. Remember, quicksave is your friend in this case.
   
5. Put down landing legs. Yes, I know that you could put the landing legs down at any time during the flight, but this is generally when I first decide to/remember.
   
6. Begin your final landing burn. Your aim here is to kill all of your velocity, both the velocity you have accumulated while falling towards the Mun, and also the velocity you started out with in orbit. Try to get a feel for your lander, and figure out how quickly it accelerates; landers with higher Thrust to Weight Ratios are a lot easier to handle at this point, as they can kill their speed a lot quicker. Ideally you want to reach zero exactly when you reach ground level, but this is not always the case. If you stop before your landing site, no worries, take a look at the next step. Again, feel free to hold F9 if you screw up.
   
7. Descend the final few metres. Unless you are a cyborg, you likely did not reach zero velocity exactly at ground level. As such, your lander will be stationary in the air above your landing site. To rectify this problem, simply cut the throttle and let yourself fall. However, it is not recommended to fall too far, and possibly throttle up a bit so that your velocity doesn't get out of hand. Keep your velocity below 10 m/s when you reach ground level, and you will land safely! Note that you also will be dealing with horizontal velocity, so keep your nose pointed at your yellow retrograde marker the whole way.
   
8. Settle onto your landing legs, extend your ladder, deploy your solar panels, activate lights and scientific instruments, and finally EVA your kerbal and plant a flag detailing your remarkable achievement.
   

Tips:

• The altitude numbers at the top of the screen display your current height above sea level, not the ground. Most cockpits have radar altimeters (the dial with the orange on it that goes up to 3000). Try switching to IVA view (the 'C' key) and taking a look at it every so often. This will let you know how far you are above the actual surface.
  
• Quicksave, quicksave, quicksave. I know I repeat myself, but this is an extraordinarily useful tool to have.
  
• If you're unsure which way to point your nose, don't worry. Keep your vessel pointed at the retrograde marker the whole way downwards (essentially the cross with the X on it).
  

If you're really having difficulties, try downloading and installing ...dare I say it on these forums?... Mechjeb, the sophisticated autopilot that can and will guide your ship down to land safely. There are currently two versions of it out there:

• Mechjeb 1.9.8 (the more user-friendly version), and
  
• Mechjeb 2.0.8 (more modern and updated for recent versions)
  

Find it here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/...topilot-v2-0-8

For bodies with atmosphere, simply pop out your parachutes and relax! However if you're landing something exceptionally large and heavy on a world with not much atmosphere (like Duna), you may want to deploy a drogue first, and then follow up with main chutes and a rocket burn afterwards. The best thing about parachutes is that the automatically keep you pointed in the retrograde direction, so you don't have to worry about steering on your way down!

Edited June 1, 2013 by CalculusWarrior

[Vanamonde]

On atmosphere worlds, there's just not a lot you can do. Try to estimate how much aerobraking will cause you to drop from the map view's curve, and aim to overshoot by that much. You can adjust a little along the way by opening more or fewer parachutes, but that's pretty crude. On vacuum worlds, my method is to do most of my braking and then once I'm down to the last 5000m or so, come at the target location roughly 45 degrees from vertical, looking past my ship at the target location. From that vantage point it's easy to see any deviation from the approach: if coming too low throttle up to slow descent, if coming high throttle down or shut off, and steer accordingly for right/left misalignments.

[Akalaël]

Are you landing too short ?

If it's the case, you sould be able to determine that fact during your descent, simply by looking at the map and tour trajectory.

To land further, just stop following the retrograde vector, and go to 90° pitch. This will slow down your descent, and if you have lateral velocity, will make you land futher.

Try also to make your desorbit burn further.

If you are landing too long, try to make your desorbit burn sooner.

If it's the case, you can, as you see on the map you are going to land too far, stay at a pitch of 0°, killing all your velocity vector indicated by your retrograde reticule, and continue to burn in that direction, flipping your trajectory. Then, switch to your new retrograde vector, and land.

Of course all this changes of trjectory will burn more fiuel, but there is no good solution there !

As always, the key is try, try, try, try...

As you, I couldn't perform better landing than 10km away from my target as I began. Now I am near 1.5km...

Ha, one last word : you can install MechJeb. This tool can land ontop of you target. I haven't it anymore (I find it spoils me of the pleasure of the game) but I remember that I had to cut it in emergency, cause this stupid computer was about to land one of my ship ontop of one of my rovers...

[XerZin]

This is what I love about forums, even though you dont ask the question yourself, maybe someone else have Thanks for the tips

[RussaX]

Success with MechJeb2

Edited June 2, 2013 by RussaX