I'm having trouble getting a satellite near Gilly?

[GregoryFFox]

I recently got one around Eve and my orbit was completely perpendicular to gilly's. I ran out of fuel merely trying to line up my orbit with gilly's. I got one with a singe ion thruster around eve as well, before deciding that even the ion thruster would run out of fuel at the rate I was going.

[Smidge204]

If you're trying to orbit Gilly, why are you wasting fuel trying to match orbits with it?

Parking orbit high over Eve, burn for an encounter and capture/circularize just like with anything else.

=Smidge=

[GregoryFFox]

If you're trying to orbit Gilly, why are you wasting fuel trying to match orbits with it?

Parking orbit high over Eve, burn for an encounter and capture/circularize just like with anything else.

=Smidge=

Don't you have to get your orbits parallel in order to make sure you can burn for an encounter when it is most opportune, could you show pics so I can see what you mean?

[RadHazard]

The best time to match planes with Gilly is when you first arrive in Eve's SOI. It takes a lot less dV to change planes when you're far away from the object you're orbiting.

[Smidge204]

Don't you have to get your orbits parallel in order to make sure you can burn for an encounter when it is most opportune, could you show pics so I can see what you mean?

If you mean matching the inclination, that's one thing. I thought you were trying to match the orbit, as in the Ap/Pe etc... which would be insane.

You don't *have* to match the orbit's inclination, but it makes it much easier sure. From a (preferably high) Eve orbit - for reasons Radhazard mentioned - set Gilly as the target and note the Ascending/Descending nodes. Thing of these as a "pivot" between the orbits - that's where you want to make your burn to adjust inclination for max efficiency. Set a node and tweak it until the ascending/descending nodes get to as close to 0.0 as possible.

If you really want to use the least amount of fuel with the greatest accuracy, do multiple small burns (two per orbit) to gradually wrench your inclination to match.

Or you could just go for it and end up in a non-equatorial orbit over Gilly.

=Smidge=