Kerbal Space Program: To Duna (Mars)!

     When going back through some of my old projects, it occurred to me that I should share my Kerbal Space Program missions. KSP is a video game / flight simulator where the player creates rockets and flies them to various locations around the solar system. My first interplanetary mission was a rocket to Duna, the KSP equivalent of Mars. I managed to build a powerful rocket to get a rover into low orbit, and then I used the highly efficient Nuclear Engine to intercept the planet.

Here you can see my orbit (orange) as I leave Kerbin to intercept Duna. This is a form of Hohmann transfer. I chose this over a bi-elliptic transfer because it's faster and easier.

After a few months of in-game time, I'm able to see Duna and its moon, Ike, in the distance.

As I got closer, I started to get a sense of the scale of things:

I managed to catch this beautiful view just before my descent into the atmosphere:

I used a parachute to slow the descent of the rover. However, since the atmosphere is considerably thinner on Duna, the parachute alone wasn't enough to land the craft. To slow the rover in its final stages of descent, I used a skycrane similar to the one used by the curiosity rover. Here is the landed craft with the skycrane still attached:

Here is the rover with the skycrane jettisoned:

That was the end of my Duna/Mars mission. The rover functioned well and I managed to explore quite a bit of the Martian landscape. This mission set the stage for me for future interplanetary missions, like my mission to Laythe.