Fun fact: The claw can grab other rockets and even Kerbals. If you move the ship while holding them they jiggle around like a cute little ragdoll.
Do you want me to post my first asteroid capture? I'd hate to spoil it for you if you haven't made one yet. Funny thing is, when I returned to Kerbin's SOI with my captured rock in tow, I had another asteroid already parked in a high elliptical polar orbit all by itself without my intervention
Similar thing happened to me. I time warped to get the asteroid into Kerbi's SoI and suddenly there was a second one. It's on a collision course though and will soon be gone. Btw, pushing those asteroids is hell! That thing wobbles all over the place. Next time I'll turn the engines around and drag the sucker!
Did you center up the ship to the asteroid 's CoM then lock the claw in place? If you decide to pull instead of push, leave plenty of room for engine exhaust. Too close to the rock and you stand a chance of canceling out your thrust and go nowhere fast.
Yup, spot on the CoM and I brought lots of RCS and reaction wheels. I even used struts from Kerbal Attachment System to stabilize the connection, no cigar. I mean, it works. I got my rock in the polar orbit I wanted. All it needs now are some adjustments to circularize and bringing the inclination to exactly 90° but there has to be a better way! I want to use those asteroids for space stations, probably even dock a couple of them together. I really want more stability. My current craft is Kraken bait as long as it is connected to the 'roid.
@superouman: I don't know. It looks perfectly legit to me. You have more parts still in place than I did.
I only lost my only engine with remaining fuel. No big deal. At first i thought my entire lander exploded and alt+tabbed. I didn't realize the spacecraft was still in one piece. I need to rebuild my lander in a different way to keep them as high as possible from landing legs.
Hint: add some of those retractable plane landing wheels to the outside. That way you've more chance of surviving a sideways landing
I have two main issues. I don't know how close i am to the surface. I check how fast the ground below the lander moves, that's certainly not a great way. I keep a very small lateral speed. I mainly keep 2 to 5 m/s of lateral speed.
A simple solution, don't land at night . Another is look for the lander's shadow to gauge your distance from the ground. Also, if you have them unlocked in career mode, is add one of those high beam headlights, the round one, pointing down. Of course real Kerbals don't need headlights
This pretty much sums up how my first rescue mission went... Congrats on your what, 3rd successful landing! Here is my mission album of my 1st successful Asteroid Redirect Mission: