With a new tech node unlocked, we have some new toys to play with. The Science Jr materials study will give us plenty of science to work our way further in the tree, and the external cameras will add to the atmosphere when flying with in-cockpit views.
The engineers at KSP get to work on two rockets to make use of the new technologies. The Igaluk 3 is shooting to be the first craft to obtain stable orbit around the Mün. It is loaded with the new batteries, with enough battery life for just over five days.
The Ukko 7, meanwhile, will be a radar mapping mission around Kerbin. The engineers have strapped batteries to just about every imaginable surface to give it a little more than 21 days of battery life (although that's at optimal conditions. With the terrain radar going, it will drain the batteries much quicker).
The Igaluk 3 is ready first, and will be followed about 10 days later by the Ukko 7. Here's Bill's view inside the Igaluk 3, with a camera looking down at the launchpad.
Bill launches the Ukko 7. At first it flies true, but after a while is starts tipping in a southwestern direction. Not much, but enough to cause concern among the engineers on the ground.
External Camera 3 captures the mountains as we fly through the cloud cover.
Bill decouples the solid boosters, and with less mass, the gimbal of the rocket engine and the stabilizing fins are better able to control the craft.
Soon Bill is back on track and heading for orbit.
At about 100 km, Bill burns for orbit.
He ends up in a stable orbit of 118 km by 108 km.
The planners at KSC set up a cismünar free-return trajectory that sends the Igaluk 3 to a 13,000-km apoapsis before dropping it down in front of the Mün's path. This will set up an easy Mün-orbit injection. The Mün encounter will take place in about two days, leaving us plenty of time in the batteries to orbit for a bit and get back home.
Bill executes the burn along the prograde vector (along the direction of his Kerbin orbit).
Almost two days later, Bill has passed apoapsis and is falling back into the path of the Mün.
Here's what the cismünar free-return trajectory looks like.
As Bill gets in near the Mün, he runs materials experiments. Woo! Science!
At the right spot, Bill burns retrograde (against the direction of travel) to inject the Igaluk 3 in a 54-km orbit. Bill has become the first kerbal to achieve a stable orbit around the Mün.
He takes a moment to admire the view.
Coming around the other side, one of the onboard cameras captures Kerbin-rise.
With both of the science jr materials studies conducted (one high over the Mün, one low over the Mün), Bill exits the craft to collect the data.
The external cameras, meanwhile, continue to pick up excellent views.
After orbiting the Mün for about a day, Bill begins plotting his return to Kerbin. Generally the most efficient way to do this is to exit the Mün's gravitational influence by exiting retrograde to the Mün's orbit. This achieves two things at once: exiting the Mün's sphere of influence while also slowing down from the Mün's orbital speed. It's a similar idea to the free-return concept.
Bill conducts the burn and bids farewell to the Mün.
Bill's view of Kerbin from about 1,000 km.
Just above the atmosphere, Bill separates the command pod.
And comes floating in under the chutes on the night side of Kerbin.
All that new science allows the researchers to get to work on a few more of the tech nodes on the tree. That department is humming right now.
A few days later, the Ukko 7 mapping mission is ready to go. Lanlo will pilot this mission. The idea for this one is to launch into a north-south orbit instead of an equatorial one. This allows the planet to spin underneath the orbit and gets as much terrain as possible under the radar. The researchers want the orbit along the terminator line (the border between daylight and night). They didn't give a reason why, and Lanlo suspects it's just because they think it's cool.
Lanlo launches in the twilight. Once again, the craft's nose wants to pull over on its own, despite pilot input to the opposite. This may be a problem in larger crafts, and we may need to add some stabilizer fins on the solid boosters. Luckily, in this case the nose falls toward the south, exactly the direction we want to go.
At about 120 km, Lanlo separates the final stage and aims for a 300-km orbit.
As he coasts up to 300 km, he opens the radar and starts scanning the terrain.
Almost a day into the flight, the craft has about 49 percent of the planet's suface mapped.
Lanlo doesn't have much to do in his cramped capsule except watch the map slowly fill in the gaps. Almost exactly five days into the voyage, and we're at 99 percent. About two days in, Lanlo notice he was covering ground already mapped. The craft was in an orbit that didn't cover some ground because the orbital period synched up with a portion of the planet's rotation. So he bumped up to about 330 km for a slightly longer orbital period.
But, as expected, the radar drains the battery juice pretty fast. His instrument tells him he has two days left of battery life. His cutoff is one day of life.
After another day drains in a couple of hours, Lanlo shuts off the radar, collects the data from it and burns for re-entry.
Lanlo separates the capsule over the north pole, and as he comes down into the atmosphere, an aurora is visible on the horizon.
Lanlo comes down above a northern desert near a wicked-looking mountain.
Two successful missions back-to-back. It seems like the space program is on track. Lanlo is disappointed he wasn't able to get that last one percent of the map, but a mission like that is geared more for an unmanned mission, and the researchers are rumored to be inventing a photovoltaic panel that will turn the sun's light into electricity, making unmanned missions possible.
The pilots are itching to land on the Mün, but the scientists say we'll need to squeeze at least another thousand dV out of our ships in order to accomplish that. We'll see what we can do.