Do soil samples go with the astronauts, or stay in the capsule?

[Soda Popinski]

I assembled my first interplanetary mission, partially in orbit, with a space station as a starting point. My ship is not equipped to splash down back on Kerbin, as I was planning on transferring the astronauts to landing capsules once they get back to the space station (International Gas Station, or IGS). Will the soil samples they take remain with them, or will they be stuck up in orbit with the ship upon return? I suppose I can always transmit the data, but I'd rather bring the samples back down.

Note: I've only been playing a week and a half or so, and am in career mode, so I don't have access to everything yet.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Soda Popinski

[Mediosthenes]

From what I've seen of the game, and the dev notes, it seems that science is just an attribute of ship parts: if you remove a part that has science, that science is removed as well. This is usually fine, though it made EVA reports a bit challenging to code, but it seems that until .23, once a kerbal enters any command pod or stores any science anywhere, they will be unable to pull it back out. Until you store the science in a part, recovering the kerbal on EVA will recover all science. If you do store the science, that science is now stuck in that part, and only recovering that part will recover the science.

If you want fully reusable ships in 0.22, I'd suggest docking the command pod to the spaceship, so that you only ever need to launch the command pods and fuel when going on a mission. With 0.23, it looks like the kerbals will be able to pull out science from any part and put it somewhere else on EVAs, but until then, all science must be sent home in the part it was first stored in.

[Soda Popinski]

Thanks for the info. Is there any logs of my previous missions? The 2nd time I went to the Mun, I did an Apollo style CM + LM, and left the LM in Munar orbit. I want to check if I did indeed recover the soil samples with the astronaut. I'm hoping to do something similar with Duna / Ike (I'm sending essentially 2 ships docked together, and will return in one after pooling the fuel).

If anyone is curious, here's one of the ships docked with the IGS.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2-h41qiJELMN0hYVU9YNnV3MWs/edit?usp=sharing

[celem]

Logs of what science you have done so far is another 0.23 feature. Will make it easier to spot what you have missed too.

In 0.22 theres not much you can do im afraid, other than repeat the run to be sure. Diminishing returns should tell you if you got it first time.

[Spaceweezle]

Sometimes I will do experiments and store them in the pod and i'm pretty sure someone steals them because they're gone when I get back to Kerbin. I have my suspicions that Jeb is selling them on the black market.

[Soda Popinski]

So in other words, to do a sample return, I need to bring back the whole original capsule that landed on the Mun or planet.

[SpaceHips]

A soil/water sample will remain on a kerbal until it enters a pod, at which point it is transferred to the pod.

I'm not aware of any way to remove the sample from the pod at this time.