some way to know if orbit is clockwise or counter-clockwise

[r4pt0r]

i had a jool mission where i aero captured into orbit, only to find i was orbiting the opposite direction of the various moons. i then didnt have the dv to land on any moon. is there any way to indicate the right direction?

[KvickFlygarn87]

Well, if your sun periapsis is way higher than Kerbin, you're on the right way (i.e. prograde), if it's way lower you're coming in retrograde.

[Capt Snuggler]

could you sling-shot around one of the moons to correct your Jool orbit?

[togfox]

When intersecting a planet, check to see if you will come in 'under' the planet or 'over' the planet (you on the sun side or the dark side of the planet). If you are under the planet then you will orbit anti-clockwise and the reverse if over the planet - assuming an anticlockwise launch from Kerbin.

[Dunbaratu]

I think the OP is asking how do you tell BEFORE you get there - when you plan your transfer maneuver - which way is the intercept.

The trick to answer that is to see which way the encounter causes your trajectory to bend. Look at the new post-encounter trajectory that is being predicted. (the purple orbit on the map view) Does it fling you radial-in or radial-out from the Sun. You can tell because radial-in will rotate the orbit backward (The orbit ahead of you dips closer to the sun and the orbit behind you rises higher from the sun), while radial-out will rotate the orbit the other way (the orbit ahead of you rises higher from the sun and the orbit behind you dips closer to the sun).

If your predicted orbit bends in the radial-out direction, you're passing inside the target planet and thus on route to a clockwise (retrograde) capture maneuver. If your predicted orbit bends in the radial-in direction, you're passing outside the target planet an thus on route to a counterclockwise (prograde) capture maneuver.

But in any case, it doesn't take much delta-V to correct for this if you stop time warp the moment you enter your target's SOI. While still far from the target planet you can burn perpendicular to your path and bend it to pass on whichever side of the planet you like and it's not that big of a deflection.

[Awaras]

You can switch the patched conic draw mode to '0' by editing the settings.cfg file in the KSP folder. This draws the projected encounter trajectory around the planet itself, allowing you to center on the target planet and fine-tune the approach.