Hello and welcome back to this Orbiter
2016 video series! I'm Tex and this is
episode 9 of Journey to Saturn. In the
previous episode we left Titan behind
and we made our way over here to
Saturn's second largest moon called Rhea
we didn't quite get all the way there, so
we need to go ahead and complete the
orbital insertion burn and also land on
the surface of Rhea in this episode
So without further ado, let's go ahead and
get started!
All right so the first thing we're gonna
do here is a small plane alignment.
I should note that I added some UCGO cargo
down on the surface of Rhea so that we
can establish a base camp and just sort
of add another touch of
realism and fun to the mission. They were
not previously there in any of my
earlier scenarios, so when you download
the scenario pack for this episode they
will be on the surface... pretty much due
to limitations with the UCGO addon because Dan has not updated
those. Dan if you're watching please
PLEASE update this. I'm just giving you
you a hard time I know you're busy, but like I said they're not really compatible...
UCGO with Orbiter 2016... neither is UMMu, so...
Orbiter crashed on me several
times when I was trying to set up base
camp and all that good stuff so when you
land on the surface of Rhea you're gonna
have to use the scenario editor
unfortunately to set up base camp and
move things around. But I do have a
scenario with all of that already
completed in my scenario pack that
you'll be able to load and base camp
will be set up. It looks pretty cool
so with that said because those were not
already in the scenario I didn't really
plan for that when we were coming to
Rhea. Now that we're basically here
at Rhea you can see it right in front of
us although it's G contribution is still
relatively low. It would have been more
ideal to plan this more ahead
of time but I guess we're still far
enough away from it that I can make some
small adjustments to the inclination.
Base camp... the cargo I guess
we're saying was sent in
advance of us on an unmanned rocket or
something...is down on the surface with
a latitude of 65 degrees south I believe
it is and longitude of 53 degrees.
So, -65 degrees and -53 degrees,.
That comes out to an
equatorial inclination of 72.03
but one thing that you
also have to consider is the longitude
of the ascending node and so when I was
experimenting with this I was not able
to get both of those exactly where they
need to be unfortunately. I don't know if
I'm doing something wrong or I'm just
too close to Rhea at this point because
one other important factor is that we need
to ensure our periapsis altitude is
relatively low.
Now I initially shot for a periapsis
altitude around 100 kilometers
when we were flying to Rhea, but on our
final approach here for the orbital
insertion burn and when we circularized
the orbit, I'm gonna have my periapsis
down around 10 kilometers -- nice and low.
That's above any terrain and that gives
us you know a nice low pass over the
surface for our lander to just hop right
down and conduct a landing. So what
I'm doing right now is just playing
around with the linear RCS and honestly
it took more time than it really 
should have quite frankly, but looking at
the interplanetary MFD on the right side
it's going to be more accurate than
the orbit MFD. I'm trying to get my
periapsis altitude -- where the mouse
cursor is currently pointed -- around 10
kilometers, but at the same time I want
to get the relative inclination up on
the top around 72.03 degrees.
So we're getting pretty
close right here we'll just use the
control key and use some microburst... try
and get those two exactly where I want them.
them so that's not bad but let's keep
playing with it and just try and get it
right on that number
okay that's probably going to be good
enough let's go ahead and time
accelerate you can see it's pretty much
one seventy two point zero three and
periapsis slightly under 10k so very
rapidly time accelerating here as we
approach Raya we're seeing the G
contribution increase and you can see
how close we are to raya yet the G
contribution is still under 0.5 zero
Saturn is just a dominant dominant
gravity force here but what we're gonna
do is go ahead and basically just turn
retrograde we are currently the orbit
HUD currently has us set up with Saturn
so when I hit the retrograde autopilot
unfortunately the you know deep star is
going to orient itself retrograde with
relation to Saturn but once we fall a
little a little more over I guess 0.50
on the G contribution for Rhea it will
switch so that the retrograde autopilot
will hold it
retrograde with relation to Raya but
that really doesn't matter because we're
going to use the circular rise program
on IMF D on the right side there and
we're just going to Coast down we're
looking at the burn time it's currently
showing to be about two hundred and
fifty two seconds of burn time about one
thousand seven hundred and change on m/s
and it has just changed so now it's with
relation to Raya so we're getting the
true numbers of what we're what we
really care about so with a burn time of
about just under two hundred twenty
seconds it's it's falling as we Coast
down closer to periapsis we can estimate
that PE T on the left side on orbit MF t
when that's about half of what the burn
time is required that's when we're gonna
conduct the burn so burn time is coming
down a little bit so probably when PE T
reaches around 105 seconds somewhere in
there would be a good time to go ahead
and hit Auto burn so let's just Coast
down here we'll pan over so we get a
nice view here of both Saturn and Rhea
and we're gonna be passing pretty close
to Raya looks like our periapsis is at
nine point seven kilometers so we'll
continue accelerating time accelerating
and we're gonna monitor PE T we don't
want to pass that up so we're getting
within about a hundred seconds now until
it's time to conduct the burn
okay so there's one oh I've slowed time
down all the way and that's time to burn
so I've hit Auto burn and imfg is
conducting the burn forests
very cool you can see how close we are
actually passing to the surface
unfortunately Raya doesn't actually have
terrain you know no tree file that has
the terrain data has been created for
Raya but it's still the still looks good
on the surface the micro textures by Jar
Manik work just fine so it will look
pretty decent down on the surface
anyways
just kind of look around you can
actually see the micro textures just in
front of us there because we're so low
above the surface here that they're
actually working they're loading and it
looks pretty good it's gonna look even
better when we get closer down so you
can see we're just about captured here
by Rhea the orbit MFD is changing and
there we go we've been captured we are
at ten times acceleration now normal
time and it's going to continue burning
until we're perfectly circular eyes just
about there and engine cutoff so that
looks great okay so now that we're
safely in orbit around Raya I've done a
quick save so you guys can pick up here
if you'd like we can look at the map MFT
and let's target
it's called lab and you can see that it
is in fact 53 degrees west and 65
degrees south so what we're gonna do is
go to base inc and we're gonna manually
input the latitude and longitude so
negative 65 negative 53 and let's change
the number of orbits to one okay so we
do have a bit of a plane change to do
and again that has to do with the fact
that I was not able to get the longitude
of the ascending node and the
inclination exactly where they should be
along with keeping periapsis nice and
low had I planned this out ahead of time
it probably would have been much more
well it definitely would have been more
fuel-efficient but it is what it is
let's take a look at our burn time here
we have not done anything with our
spreadsheet in the previous episode so
I've added a couple lines in here for
now we're doing a Titan to Raya mo I so
basically what we have remaining in our
fuel from from leaving Titan and
arriving at Raya
so the spreadsheet just kind of froze on
me there there we go so let's input what
we have left that was sixty one thousand
five hundred and twenty meters per
second so that means we use three
thousand nine hundred and sixty-four
meters per second to get from Titan to
and circularize the orbit so that's kind
of a lot I think actually I believe
looking at the moon to moon calculator
that Demetri provided me it should have
been less than that but I'm sure that's
down to just purely pilot error on my
part the other thing that I wanted to
mention with the deep star that I've
noticed is it uses an incredible amount
of fuel just orienting the vessel here
so for example if I just hit the pro
grade autopilot button it's convenient
because it just you know points it pro
great for me and I don't have to take
the time to sit there and do it myself
but it uses so much fuel more fuel than
I really I guess anticipated so that is
definitely one thing that I should have
taken into account when I did the flight
planning but fortunately we've brought
more than enough fuel with us that it
should not be a real problem but just
keep that in mind if you happen to be
flying with deep star and you're trying
to you know keep things super tight on
fuel you really need to account for that
extra fuel expenditure you're gonna use
just orienting deep star and I suppose
it makes sense it is a big heavy vessel
so alright so we're coasting over to the
node here on base income ft it looks
like about 6.9 seconds of burn time and
so we're just going to get over there
and bring that off plane distance in the
center there it's currently at 83
kilometers we're going to bring that
down to close to zero anyways alright so
we'll burn when we're about three
seconds away from the node that is half
of our burn time three and a half
seconds or so and that's approaching and
we're burning it's all manually orient
the vessel here
because of the engine thrust is so great
and there we go so we're off by 315
meters no big deal the eccentricity of
the orbit changed just a little bit so
we'll bring that back down close to zero
and that's fine okay so we are now in
line with the landing site and we can
just go ahead and orient the vessel
pro-grade just so we kind of see where
we're going and we're gonna Coast we're
just over a thousand kilometers away
from the landing site so there is
absolutely no rush at this point
rheya is pretty small actually so it's
not going to take a whole lot of time to
or fuel for that matter to deorbit and
land now we are going to use the base
land MFD that's by topper and it is
available in the links down in the
description below the video here I'm not
sure I don't think it's in full release
phase you can download it from orbit or
form and so I'm not a hundred percent
positive but I think it's still being
you know developed so I you know I had a
little bit of trouble with documentation
because there's no real clear
documentation he asked like some
pictures and it just it you know it's
not it's not completely done so I
suspect that once you know the final
product is out that there will be at
least more comprehensive documentation
but I was able to pretty much figure it
out and the other thing is is I don't
know how much testing he's really done
with this on other moons I know he's
done extensive testing with it on on our
Moon so but I was able to get it to work
a couple of times I don't know if I did
I'm sure it was user error on my part
but a couple of times when I was testing
with it it actually didn't stop me in
time I ended up hitting the surface too
hard but it always does a great job of
landing you exactly where you want to
land longitude latitude wise so we're
now in the lander and we've just
undocked from deep star
so we're going to just translate back
away from or maybe down I should say
away from deeps are a bit here and
actually translating down seems to be
bringing off plane distance down a
little bit so that works out fine that
should suffice
so I we're about just under five hundred
kilometers from the landing site so it's
probably a good time to go ahead and
undock again it's not a huge rush the
actual deorbit burn is not going to be
really started until we're I think maybe
about twenty kilometers from the landing
site incredibly close like I said so
we're gonna go to manual mode on base
land and input the latitude and
longitude and that is done and we'll hit
okay and we're just gonna leave it alone
for right now but once we get a little
closer we're going to actually activate
the autopilot and base land will
actually go ahead and conduct the entire
deorbit burn and landing for you
so yeah so like I said at this point
it's not a huge rush we're safely in our
Lander here we're waving goodbye to the
crew and just sort of slowly drifting
away from deep star deep star will
remain here in a very low rheya orbit
while the crew goes down and well some
of the crew there is some left behind on
deepstar obviously for safety purposes
but the crews going to go down and land
on the surface conduct some science
experiments and just check out what this
moon is all about
all right so we're pressing the yaw
pitch roll and engine buttons on bass
land and then we will finally hit
autopilot so that has activated the
autopilot and baseline is going to
actually go ahead and conduct this burn
once we get close enough and so we just
got a little bit of time here we're
gonna be coasting forward we're about
330 kilometers away from the landing
site I'm not a hundred percent sure of
everything I'm looking at here but on
base land you'll see engine and it has a
percentage and it's currently counting
up so it's at seven point nine four
percent and trending upwards so I
believe that that's telling us how much
percentage of the engine power is going
to be required if we were to conduct the
burn at this point in time so if we
started our deorbit burn now we'd only
be using eight percent of our engine
power I could be wrong and most
definitely probably Anmer honk but
that's what I believe we're looking at
and I recall something about one of the
images that he had in the package showed
you should hit the ignition button
I guess the IGN button on the right side
when engine gets to 50% and I think that
has something to do with G loading so
you don't want to you know put too much
G's on your crew members now i'm i tried
pressing IGN and again i'm sure i'm
doing something wrong here but nothing
happens whenever engine got to 50% I hit
IGN and nothing happened so you know in
my testing I said all right well I'll
just I'll just leave it alone and I
think it goes all the way up to Oman
almost a hundred percent and then it
will finally activate the engines and go
ahead and land so that means that we get
incredibly close to the landing site
before the engines actually get ignited
but um it worked so that's the most
important thing so we've got some time
here we're just gonna be coasting
nothing's going to be happening let's go
ahead and just cut forward in time and
we'll come back just before the engines
ignite
okay we're getting pretty close to
engine ignition here we're at 87 percent
89 90 91 92 and there we go engine
ignition okay so it went almost to a
hundred percent like I said you can see
the engines are firing and we are
leaving deepstar behind there that looks
really really cool so our crew members
here on the lander are the lucky ones
they get to go down and land on the
surface of Raya and I have to say those
micro textures really add so so much to
this because looking further away it
just you know it just doesn't look that
great so big thanks to jar Manik I've
probably said it before and if I haven't
I apologize but definitely a big thanks
to him for that add-on that has really
added so much for landing on the surface
of various bodies throughout the solar
system all right so I think one thing
we're looking at on base sink
I'm sorry base land autopilot there
you'll see the see sort of the cross and
then you'll see a line extending down to
the surface so I believe that where that
line ends is the coordinates for our
landing site and you can see the cross I
believe is indicating us and as we slow
down
I believe ideally that that straight
line should be extending directly below
us so that means that we're we're
basically right above the landing site
and then base land is going to just
bring us down straight down for a
landing on the surface and I guess
you'll notice as the engines are burning
as we are scrubbing some of our orbital
velocity here that the engine percentage
listed on base land MFT there is coming
down so we've scrubbed quite a bit of
velocity by this point you can see our
orbital speed on the HUD up there on the
top and it's it's getting pretty low and
we are within half a kilometre of the
landing site so we're essentially right
over top of the landing site
we're now just just now about 200 meters
from being directly over our landing
site so I'll pull up the surface MFD on
the right side and we're sort of because
of the orientation of this lander with
the you know with the engine down on the
bottom we're sort of just looking
straight up into space and you can see
there is the lab the UC geo cargo down
there on the surface so we are directly
over our target fantastic it looks like
the main deorbit burn is just about
complete there we go all right so base
and is now going to orient us sort of
level with the horizon and you know I
don't I'm not sure why it gets so you
know so wobbly here it seemed like it
had a little bit of trouble stopping
this this rolling here I tried to use
kill rotation and just try and settle it
down and eventually it settled down
pretty much but yeah I don't know that
again I don't know how much testing was
done with this Lander or on you know
other moons like rheya that are much
smaller than our own moon all of these
are probably factors that play into how
this MFD actually works but um and again
I'm not 100% sure what I'm looking at
like I'm basically in there you have the
the circle with the line going through
the center of it I'm not sure if that's
like almost like targeting and I guess
when you're directly over your landing
target it sort of lines up with the
fainter circle you can see below it
anyways just pulling a burn time here
and putting in our Delta V estimating
about 80 meters per second pretty much
all of that just going straight down and
just looking at how much distance we
would need to scrub that so I'm not I
think what I'm gonna do is actually take
over manual control here in just a bit
and that way I can manually set us down
just like just like they did in Apollo
11
they took over manual control and really
do some hotshot landing here no I just I
want to be able to set us down as
smoothly as possible and I think that
base land does that great on the moon
but from my testing here on rheya it
sort of causes a bouncing and you know
it's it's safe
you don't crashing but we're gonna try
and do this a little bit more
realistically and quite frankly it's fun
landing manually so I've disabled the
autopilot on base land
I've now hit the level horizon autopilot
just to keep us nice and level with the
horizon and we are coming down pretty
quickly so I'm I'm putting in more of
our hover engine thrust here slowing
down our descent rate to something a
little bit more manageable and we're
under one kilometer we are getting very
close to the ground everything is
looking great at this point I'm just
going to rotate over to the left and
just get a nice view of Saturn there
because why not that just looks
fantastic so we're about six hundred
meters just over six hundred meters
above the ground I guess we can turn off
the base land MFD we don't need that at
this point it has done a great job of
ensuring that we hit our mark because we
do need to land pretty close to the
cargo here that we have sitting on the
surface otherwise it would be quite a
hike for our crewmembers to hop over
there in their spacesuits we do not have
any Rovers to drive around you know if
you cgo worked that could be fun
actually so hopefully Dan gets that
working at some point in the future
because I definitely would like to do a
series with you see Geo
but as we come down here you can see the
micro textures by Jar Manik are really
shining that just looks so superbly
great she's using a little bit of linear
RCS just to keep us from landing in one
of those craters there we have a nice
manageable descent rate plenty of fuel
so I do not anticipate any problems with
fuel I guess it was quite a bit closer
on fuel than probably I anticipated when
we took off from Titan and rendezvous
with the deep star but it made for an
exciting episode so this one may not be
quite as intense as that but definitely
it's always fun to land on a new world
so we're just about down on the ground
here
and we've just hit the ground pretty
softly there so we'll go ahead and turn
off the level autopilot we're gonna go
to the scenario editor and just do what
we did before go to location and hit
apply that just set us down with zero
ground speed and that we were not
sliding on the surface but we are safely
on the ground guys we have made it here
and yeah I mean that's looks great okay
so as you can see we have a base camp
here unpacked our crew is currently
conducting science experiments we have a
fantastic view of Saturn in the
background and it I'd say overall this
has been a pretty successful flight from
Titan to Raya we're down here on the
surface and that's going to go ahead and
wrap up this episode so as always guys
really appreciate you watching we are
what nine episodes in now so I'm not
sure how many other worlds we'll go to
we might check out Enceladus or
something like that
before we start planning our trip back
home
so until the next step so guys listen
take care thanks as always for watching
and we will see you then
