As I've been doing lunar missions I wanted to give myself a sort of mission, not blindly flying there and landing with no purpose, I wanted to goal. So I set a target on the surface that I had to be reasonably close to and I chose the lunar pit in the middle of the Sea of Tranquility. The LRO satellite orbiting the moon has revealed the existence of some 200 holes in the surface, the most prominent one so far by all visual references is this one, appox. location 8.34°N, 33.22°E.
Now not having much reference to surface features other than the F4 map I had to devise a way to first estimate the location of the hole on this map (closest feature is the crater Sinas) and second find a landmark from where I needed to start retro burning. First attempt had a good trajectory over the landing area, my landmark was the crater Lawrence but I overshot the zone by 190 miles. The second attempt I tried moving up the start of the retro fire but overshot 170 miles. The third try I used a completely different landmark, the crater Watts, and landed 55 miles from the target. Honestly I thought that was about as close as I'd ever get.
I tried again, this time using a the crater Asada to begin my burn and I came to a near stop over the area, managed my decent and landed at 9.419N, 33.207E or approx. 1.5 miles from the hole, or in other words a BULLSEYE! :thumbup:
Even though the new hi-res textures for the moon are exponentially better than they used to be I was curious to know what my landing site looked like, in real life, so off to the LROC website for some more up close images.
Here is the LROC image of the whole site, the hole is centered on the bottom, my landing spot is a yellow dot near the top and a little left;
This is a close up (res down to 0.5 meters/px) of the touchdown site. Relatively smooth spot:
I'm still really excited about pulling this off. So has anyone else made their own lunar missions, or even Mars, etc. where you had a specific target?
Also I should mention that I've never tried landing on Brighton and actually choose to ignore it's presence on the surface.
Now not having much reference to surface features other than the F4 map I had to devise a way to first estimate the location of the hole on this map (closest feature is the crater Sinas) and second find a landmark from where I needed to start retro burning. First attempt had a good trajectory over the landing area, my landmark was the crater Lawrence but I overshot the zone by 190 miles. The second attempt I tried moving up the start of the retro fire but overshot 170 miles. The third try I used a completely different landmark, the crater Watts, and landed 55 miles from the target. Honestly I thought that was about as close as I'd ever get.
I tried again, this time using a the crater Asada to begin my burn and I came to a near stop over the area, managed my decent and landed at 9.419N, 33.207E or approx. 1.5 miles from the hole, or in other words a BULLSEYE! :thumbup:
Even though the new hi-res textures for the moon are exponentially better than they used to be I was curious to know what my landing site looked like, in real life, so off to the LROC website for some more up close images.
Here is the LROC image of the whole site, the hole is centered on the bottom, my landing spot is a yellow dot near the top and a little left;
This is a close up (res down to 0.5 meters/px) of the touchdown site. Relatively smooth spot:
I'm still really excited about pulling this off. So has anyone else made their own lunar missions, or even Mars, etc. where you had a specific target?
Also I should mention that I've never tried landing on Brighton and actually choose to ignore it's presence on the surface.