Flight Question How to align orbit when returning to earth

[gamcdonald]

Hi. I'm just returning from a tour of jupiter's moons. I'm approaching earth now (within it's gravity) and i'm trying to align my orbit with that of the ISS. But don't know how to do it. Any help would be great.

 

[Cras]

Wait until you are in the Earth SOI, then open IMFD, Target Intercept, target ISS, and find a burn solution that is within your dV budget, you will be put into an orbit that you will then be able to do normal phasing and rendezvous ops.

I have not used it for your specific flight, but I have done it catching up to things in lunar orbit, or returning to Earth into a specific orbit.

 

[gamcdonald]

thanks mate. will try that now.

 

[statickid]

just pitch orbit normal or anti-normal to reduce your rInc to the ISS. It MIGHT not be possible on your first pass. if it isn't, i usually just capture into a very eccentric orbit and wait for a window to align on my second pass while floundering out at apogee.

You can use a number of tools to get it right, but I usually just use the regular orbit track map MFD with align plane MFD-- and make sure you are showing the orbital plane, not the orbit track, which is usually useless for this purpose.

for maximum fun i usually try to aerobrake to slow down, when the ship is capable