Contract: Position a satellite in kolniya Orbit. How?

[Melcom]

I have trouble with a contract. It says I have to get a satellite around Kerbin. Only after i used MechJeb, i could get my satellite exactly the wanted orbit. But the contracts still says "Reach designated kolniya Orbit around Kerbin with minimal deviation" is not ok.

Here is a picture:

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/44239433146410373/22383DED55D919B851A16BB87E0779E444A6D6A9/

I mean, come on, this is not perfect but nearly! I used MJ to get that close and it is still not good enough?

How do you do this with vanilla options?

Edited December 16, 2014 by Melcom

[WanderingKid]

That should definitely be close enough. Some troubleshooting:

Just the probe core should be attached. Disconnect your rocket with a Kerbal in it if necessary.

Shut off SAS.

Is it perhaps bugged on which one is failing. Does it have solar panels and does it have an antenna. Did it need a mat bay or goo can?

[RexKramer]

Double check you are going the right direction. The target orbits have dots which indicate their rotation direction. Make sure your ship is going the same direction as the dots.

[Melcom]

It needs a Probe core and power. This is "green". Also the 10 seconds stabillity is "green".

It's just a Probecore (the round one, no SAS), 2 antenas, an engine, a bit fuel, a wheel, 4 Solarpanels, a battery. No Kerbals.

direction follows the dots...

[Taki117]

looks like you may need to kick your periapsis out a little bit more, Generally I keep the contract window open to make sure that everything else is green before neutralizing controls.

[Melcom]

looks like you may need to kick your periapsis out a little bit more, Generally I keep the contract window open to make sure that everything else is green before neutralizing controls.

ok, that helped. Two really fine pushes for PE and AP helped to get the final millimiters (on the map). Now its nearly one orbit.

Thanks to all.

The tollerance for this contracts should be way more forgiveably.

[WuphonsReach]

Back in 0.25, the contracts usually had a 7% variance allowance. So you could be a bit off in the Ap/Pe distances and still succeed. However, it always seemed to be more picky about the inclination value.

The contract window should still say what the allowance is. The 7% contracts are pretty easy, the 3% ones require a bit more fine-tuning.

[lynx1984]

I am having a very similar problem. I have green check marks for orbit and stability and when I go and check status back at the base it says complete other than the part where it says "a new unmanned probe with power and antenna" I have done this part. not sure what I'm doing wrong. I have put three satellites in orbit all with same result.

[RexKramer]

I am having a very similar problem. I have green check marks for orbit and stability and when I go and check status back at the base it says complete other than the part where it says "a new unmanned probe with power and antenna" I have done this part. not sure what I'm doing wrong. I have put three satellites in orbit all with same result.

1. Is it a new probe?

2. Is it an unmanned probe?

3. Does it have power? A battery and solar panel will do here.

4. Does it have an antenna?

5. Keep in mind some contracts also require goo cans or other science items.

If you met all those requirements, the contract should have a green check next to it, even before you launch. If you are sitting on the launch pad, and don't see a green check beside vessel requirements, don't launch. You have left something important off.

If you indeed had a green check while on the launchpad, but it is no longer there when you get to orbit, check to make sure you haven't staged away something important like a battery or antenna.

[tomf]

With fineprint in .25 I always had to go into 5x warp for 10 seconds before the neutralize controls for 10 seconds condition would register as completed.

[Melcom]

I want to add something to my early problem.

Now, after 5 satellites, i never had such a problem with finetuning again. It's a bit strange but now all orbits get aproved by the contract, even with not perfect matches. Maybe there really is a difference in contract difficulty.

@lynx: Maybe your probe is out of power, on the darkside of kerbin or something?

[Ziff]

Double check you are going the right direction. The target orbits have dots which indicate their rotation direction. Make sure your ship is going the same direction as the dots.

They also have the Orbit Inclination if you open up the [+] Notes section. 0-90 is a prograde orbit, 90-180 is a retrograde orbit.

[Vladthemad]

Assuming you're rotating around Kerbin in the correct direction (that one got me more than once), you're probably a lot further off than it looks. In general you can usually eyeball most of the low altitude sat missions, but with distances of millions of meters a little bit off visually is really a huge difference. That gap on the right of your picture tells me you're probably 10s of km off the requirement due to the distances involved.

Edited December 30, 2014 by Vladthemad

[Empiro]

Also, I believe that for Kolniya and Keo-synchronous orbits, the orbital period matters more than the exact AP/PE. Try to get it as close as possible to 6 hours.

[Leatherneck]

Assuming you're rotating around Kerbin in the correct direction (that one got me more than once)

Well that solved my problem I think. I wasn't paying attention, and going nuts wondering why it wasn't working, since I had near identical orbits to what was asked. Going in the right direction helps lol.

EDIT: Yes. I just had to flip my orbit around.

Edited December 31, 2014 by Leatherneck

[Kryxal]

It would be sort of nice if the note showed you how far out you were from each parameter, maybe with colour-coding red/yellow/green. (Stupid auto-spellcheck, colour is a perfectly valid word!)

[Cardano]

To chime in on this :

What is the best way to insert to a Kolniya orbit?

For example : Should I be trying to match the orbital angle at launch? is it better to go straight polar orbit first them make adjustments there? Should I circularize at the AP to allow for lower dV angle changes and then burn down the PE later?

Most of the reason I accepted this contract was because I had no idea how to get into that kind of orbit, and I came up short on dV on my first attempt - so I figured I would attempt to be more efficient instead of just 'adding more boosters'.

Thanks,

Cardano

[Arsonide]

Now, after 5 satellites, i never had such a problem with finetuning again. It's a bit strange but now all orbits get aproved by the contract, even with not perfect matches. Maybe there really is a difference in contract difficulty.

If you look carefully at each contract, they will say the deviation required, but the deviation will not be in numerical form. They will give you a vague deviation window. If they ask it to be within reasonable deviation, you can have the apoapsis and periapsis within 7%, and the angle within 6.3 degrees (7% of 90). If they ask you to be within marginal deviation, they want 5%, and if they ask for minimal deviation, it will need to be 3%.

Unfortunately for Molniya orbits, this means that the periapsis has a very small deviation window, as 3% of a small number is an even smaller number, so in 1.0 I clamped the minimum deviation window to 750 meters. It can never be any smaller than that. All of these values are configurable in Contracts.cfg in the Satellite section.