Mission Quickstart: Raising a Parking Orbit

This walkthrough shows how to take the stock low Earth orbit spacecraft and push it to a higher circular orbit using the mission planner. You will script two burns: the first raises apoapsis, the second circularises at the new altitude. The flow touches each part of the planner so you can reuse the pattern for more complex missions.

Prerequisites

• The simulation is running with physics initialised.
• You have created a spacecraft using the + New Spacecraft wizard (the default parameters produce a circular orbit around 400 km altitude; edit them before creating the vehicle if you need a different starting state).
• The spacecraft is focused so its orbital data streams update in real time (right-click it in the scene or the Spacecraft window and choose Focus).

Step 1 – Inspect The Starting Orbit

Open the Spacecraft Detail window for your vehicle and confirm the baseline orbital elements (semi-major axis ≈ 6,778 km for the default craft, eccentricity ≈ 0). Leave this window open, as it will update once the programme executes.

Step 2 – Open The Mission Planner

1. Click the Planner button in the top bar.
2. Select your spacecraft from the drop-down at the top of the planner window (if it is not already selected).
3. Replace the default help script with the quickstart programme below.

clear

# Raise apoapsis to roughly 500 km
+10m [0.025,0,0]

# Circularise at the next apoapsis
apoapsis :circular

Script breakdown

• clear ensures any previous manoeuvre nodes are removed before you add new ones.
• +10m [0.025,0,0] schedules a 25 m/s prograde burn ten minutes from “now”. This raises apoapsis without immediately circularising.
• apoapsis :circular tells the planner to compute the Δv needed to circularise when the spacecraft reaches the new apoapsis. Because this is a directive, you must generate the Δv vector before running the programme.

Step 3 – Calculate Δv And Validate

1. Click Calculate ΔV budget. The directive resolves to a concrete vector (you will see a new [t,n,w] triple injected underneath the directive line).
2. Expand the Propulsion Analysis panel:
   • Confirm the planned burns are within the stage’s Δv budget.
   • Check for any warnings about propellant depletion or overlapping burns.
3. Review the Maneuver Nodes table to verify timing and magnitudes.

Step 4 – Execute The Programme

When everything looks correct, click Run Maneuver Program. The nodes are sent to the physics worker:

• The first burn executes at now + 10 minutes, raising apoapsis.
• The automatically generated circularisation burn executes when the craft reaches that apoapsis.

Keep the planner open so you can watch the node list transition from “Scheduled” to “Executed” as the simulation clock advances.

Step 5 – Evaluate The Result

• Spacecraft Detail – The orbital elements panel should show a higher semi-major axis and eccentricity trending toward zero after the second burn.
• Mission Timeline – Open the timeline window to confirm both burns appear in chronological order with their computed Δv values.
• Orbit Graph – Plot altitude or eccentricity to visualise the apoapsis raise and circularisation.
• Groundtrack – If you are targeting specific surface coverage, check how the ground track and coverage heatmap adjust.
• Share – Use the Share window to capture a URL containing the updated mission state for collaborators.

Where To Go Next

• Try inserting a plane-change burn by adding a [0,0,0.015] manoeuvre at the ascending or descending node (use the orbit info badges to time it).
• Swap the stage presets in the spacecraft wizard for a high-thrust launcher configuration and rehearse staging with the jettison command.
• Combine multiple directives—such as periapsis :circular:start—to build parking-orbit to transfer-orbit sequences with finite burn timing.

Once you are comfortable with this pattern, the mission planner becomes a repeatable way to design transfer stacks, synchronise multi-spacecraft constellations, and validate propulsion budgets before committing to a run in the main simulation.