Hello Europa!

[TMac3000]

Today at exactly 1:00 pm EST, after three simluated years of travel and a disturbingly close encounter with Io, the landing gear of my Shuttle-A touched the icy surface of Europa As expected (without Orulex), there wasn't much to see, although the view of Jupiter was breathtaking. Still, it felt like one hell of an achievment, since this is something I've been trying to do for a while.

After touchdown, I scenario-edited in a UMMU for a quick stroll around on the surface. And look at that, the Star Child didn't blast me out of the solar system

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Very nice! Did you use TransX or IMFD? I haven't attempted that trip yet, I'm still working my way around the inner planets.

 

[TMac3000]

Very nice! Did you use TransX or IMFD?

Both. I use TransX for the launch and for plotting course corrections, and monitor the results in IMFD's Map screen. This approach has gotten me to Mercury and Mars.

The thing that kept messing up my previous Europa trips was figuring out how to avoid ending up in a retrograde orbit around Jupiter. I should have known all I had to do was burn toward the other side of the planet.

 

[the.punk]

Congratulations!:thumbup:
For the outher planets I often use transX but sometimes also IMFD. And kinda like the scene of jupiter of one of its moons.

 

[Shadow Addict]

Congrats! I was pretty satisfied too when I did my first Europa flight when I was testing the Arrow out. Did you do a direct Europa insertion or did you enter Jupiter orbit first?

 

[TMac3000]

Congrats! I was pretty satisfied too when I did my first Europa flight when I was testing the Arrow out. Did you do a direct Europa insertion or did you enter Jupiter orbit first?

The latter. Full details of the journey:

Started out from Mir. Plane alignment and launch from Earth went smoothly.

After a little over two and a half years of travel, I closed up orbit around Jupiter and circularized it to around 100,000 km.

Aligned planes with Europa and did the standard Luna-style transfer using Transfer MFD. Reached orbit insertion at a little over 800 km. After my descent burn, I touched down at a vertical speed of about .5 m/s

 

[george7378]

Wow

I've only ever flown to the Moon before - good work.

 

[Flightoffancy]

IMFD seems to work the best for me with these sorts of trips.

You could Manually eject from Earth orbit, align planes with Jupiter and then use the transfer MFD to reach Jupiter, but is just seems to feel much more gratifying to me to do it with just one perfectly times burn from LEO (followed by a couple of corrections en route due to time warp).

But yes, dancing with the Jovian Moons is fun. Bye the way, if you want something to see when you get to Europa, you could try the Galileo Base from anemazoso. [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2898"]Galileo Station[/ame]

Its some of the prettiest scenery I've seen for Orbiter outside Earth.

 

[george7378]

Just a question:

I have managed to 'master' (I'm sure there are better ways of doing it) flight between planets, for example Earth and Mercury with IMFD, but I don't know how to fly from Earth to a Jovian Moon. What else do I need to do?

Thanks.

 

[Flightoffancy]

Make sure you have a ship that can get you there.

The date of your launch is important with going to the higher orbits. You will want to use the forward velocity of Earth. So plan your ejection when Jupiter appears in front of Earth in its orbit.

1. Setup the course for intercept with Jupiter as the target.

2. Go back and setup the ejection burn and tell it to use your "Course".

When you use the AB, it will angle and burn time so that you are ejecting from Earth Orbit and transferring to Jupiter's with one burn. You will need to hit AB a couple of more times along the way, somewhere around Mars's orbit and again midway to jupiter. Unless you played with the settings, an Off-plane plan should be set so that you don't have to worry the orbital plane alignment.

You'll then need to plan your approach and orbit insertion to Jupiter (So you don't come in Shoemaker Levi 9 style) and then transfer to Europa's Orbit, and do it all over again as you might from LEO to the moon. Its too hard to go directly to one of the Jovian moons from Earth as Jupiter's tidal forces are too great that close in for the MFD to be at all accurate over time compression.

Hope this helps. There are probably better methods than mine out there.

 

[george7378]

Ah, right. Is there a recommended Jupiter orbit insertion altitude for each Moon? Also, IMFD usually puts me in a retrograde orbit using the planet approach program, so is there a way around this?

Thanks.

 

[Shadow Addict]

If you don't mind using TransX, flytandem explained to me how to insert directly into a Jovian moon's orbit without getting into a Jupiter parking orbit first here: http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=11422

 

[Flightoffancy]

Ah, right. Is there a recommended Jupiter orbit insertion altitude for each Moon?
Thanks.

That's the tricky part. It has to be pretty low for your SOI to become that of the jovian moon (especially with IO and Europa). And if you are coming in directly without a parking orbit first, you will need a lot of thrust in in a short amount of time to insert into its orbit before leaving the moon's SOI.

Thanks Shadow, I'll have to check out that thread for future reference.