Moon Blocking Power. What are the chances!

[Slum]

Was trying to do an inclination change and desperately needed power coming out of eclipse. And then this happened 30s before the burn.

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

Chances are - 1 every month

[Bill Phil]

Actually more. The Mun is a perfectly equatorial orbit. So it's pretty common.

[LethalDose]

Actually more. The Mun is a perfectly equatorial orbit. So it's pretty common.

No, it's actually it's slightly less than once a month (Munth?). In an equatorial orbit around Kerbin will be in syzygy with the Mun and Kerbin once an orbit, but to include the Sun in the linear configuration only happens during Sun-Mun-Kerbin syzygy, which happens slightly less than once a mo/unth.

[Bill Phil]

Really dependent on spacecraft position more than the other values.

[Janos1986]

Once a month you're gonna regret your ever started the mission, like when your lady is in full PMS.

[Scotius]

Batteries and\or RTG's are your friends in such situations. In worst case you can try running the engines at lowest possible throttle - if they are producing charge along the thrust.

[PnDB]

I sent a scansat probe to Minmus once, and planned to make an inclination change during transfer to come into a near-polar orbit, reaching Minmus close to its ascending node. Things were going fine until it was time for an inclination change, at which point I noticed I had no control over the probe. My solar panels were pointed toward Kerbol, but I had no power. Turns out I had been flying in the shadow of the Mun for a while, and my transfer orbit happened to line the probe up with the Mun rather nicely. I was surprised how long it took to get out of the Mun's shadow and get some power back. No worries, though, as I still had plenty of time later in the transfer to make adjustments to come in near-polar around Minmus.

I have also self-shadowed all my solar panels before while in orbit around the Mun, pointing directly away from Kerbol. I had to wait until slightly later in the Mun's orbit to get a little bit of power and change my probe's orientation. Modified the probe design so that won't happen again.

[Norpo]

Yeah, something similar happened on my Moho probe mission, the solar panels were the single, non-tracking variety, so as I was going to burn the Moho Inclination Change burn, I wasn't facing the sun, and the probe had no power. As I recall, though, it wasn't a total loss, it did a fly-by of Eve, and it was my first (and as of right now, only) Dres flyby mission.

The Flying Lemur, the best piece of low-tech junk I could ever have.

[StrandedonEarth]

I had the opposite happen on Eve. Here you can see I've landed on the night side, but my panels are facing the Evian surface and still getting power!

[Tex_NL]

No big deal, you're only doing a plane change. You can always do that half an orbit later. A power outage like this really gets annoying when you're on a collision course with your space station.

Ever tried flying your shuttle THROUGH your station at a few dozen m/s? I did!