Flight Question about orbit Mars Moon

alex0002tw

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sorry my english is poor

i just play orbiter 2010 about.... 5 days

now i am at Mars (Fly from Earth)

then i fly to Phobos from Mars ,that is a small Moon
:lol:

my question is :
when i at Earth , i fly to Moon , because Earth's Moon is Big , so if i close enought , the Gravity of Moon will catch me , then i can orbit it......

can i Orbit at Phobos ? even Deimos ?

if i can , how close i must , to be catch by Gravity of Phobos and Deimos ?

Thx =)

:tiphat:
 
Welcome :tiphat:

Well unfortunately, the gravity of both of Mars' moons is too low to effectively orbit them. Instead what you want to do is to match your orbit around Mars with that of the moon you are going to. That is, sync your orbit with that of the moon, inclination and all.
 
Mattyv is more or less correct here. If I recall correctly, a tangential transfer is a pretty efficient way to go about it. I think markl316's IMFD tutorial gives a good primer on how to perform this flight.
 
With Phobos, you can actually make a "rendezvous" with this small moon... It's very interesting...
 
Yes, actually it would be interesting to be able to use SyncMFD for this... But you can target only vessels with it. Maybe an idea for a new feature ?
 
You could cheat and put an invisible ship on the surface.
 
Getting to Phobos from Mars is different from getting to the Moon from Earth. It's much more like rendezvousing with a spacecraft.
For beginners, IMFD can perform a very accurate rendezvous with the Martian moons, just by using the AB autopilot. All you have to do is wait for the right time and then "pull & shoot".(look here for more information and playback(s)
You cannot actually orbit Phobos because of it's distance and it's very low mass compared to the dominant body in the system. (Mars).
You can-however-place your ship in a pseudo-orbit around it.
Run the scenario Navigation\Special orbits\Orbiting Phobos to see an example of such a pseudo-orbit.
Entering a true orbit around the Mars moon Phobos is not possible even at low altitude, because its
weak gravity is entirely dominated by the gravitational field of the much more
massive Mars.
This scenario demonstrates a Phobos 'pseudo-orbit' which is actually an orbit
around Mars, with the same orbital period as Phobos, and slightly perturbed
eccentricity.
Try also time acceleration and the external preset view (Ctrl-F1, Preset).

:cheers:
 
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