Alright, second challenge, Swinging on a Star!
In this mission, the goal is to land on Ganymede and doing a flyby of the rest.
Launch and reaching orbit, but payload's still covered.
Fairing ejection and reassembly. The Bot Jovi is ready for an adventure!
Then the Venus burn started. After leaving a small amount of fuel in the second stage, Bot Jovi is separated and continues the burn. The second stage is dumped back to Earth.
Initially VEEGA was planned, but the perfect alignment was missed. So improvisation to VEEEGA is conducted. Bot Jovi manages to enter Jupiter's SOI and performs capture burn near the gas giant's atmosphere.
A series of gravity assist is performed to bring Bot Jovi closer to Ganymede's orbit. First two GA is done using Callisto, followed by Ganymede GA.
After GA, Bot Jovi raises its perijove to Ganymede's level, so the capture burn doesn't cost much.
Finally Bot Jovi got to low orbit and landed safely on Ganymede.
After doing some activities, it's back to orbit and prepared for leaving the Jupiter system. The plan is to use Io GA to raise the apojove, and eventually use Ganymene GA to yeet Bot Jovi back to Earth. Europa encounter is in this return trajectory.
Bot Jovi managed to escape the Jupiter system and aimed for Earth by doing a powered GA in the final Ganymede encounter. That last flyby also sets up Earth encounter on the next turn. Upon entering Earth's SOI, Bot Jovi gets into a t-pose and deploys its heatshields. The remaining fuel is burned to slow it down. After a spicy reentry, Bot Jovi landed back on Earth safely, still t-posing.
Mission Log: