Saturday, April 6, 2013

Gilly!

I had intended to drop this lander on to Eve when I launched it, but changed my mind when I had arrived and opted to try to land on Gilly instead. I made a few mistakes, like entering the EVE SOI oribting the wrong direction, so I had to correct that. The orbital plan for Gilly was about 75 degrees off mine, so I had to correct for that. Lastly, Gilly is tiny, almost too tiny. When I did finally get the lander on the surface (using only RCS, which was overkill) I actually had to thrust in to the moon to stop it from sliding around.





Gilly is so small it is almost like having to dock with a station just to reach it. Once there, the gravity is so low that you have to force the probes down. Time compression isn't available for a lot of it because you are too close.


It is also very rough, so I had to fly around some to find a semi-level landing spot.




But, in the end I did get a couple nice Eve-rise shots.



I do not know if a rover will even stay on the ground here. I'll find out someday. 






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