Year 17: Asteroid Alert!

So, Valentina, you are probably wondering why we recalled you from the Mun at such short notice. It turns out we have a top-secret mission for you, and we need to keep it mostly secret to avoid mass panic.

This is an expensive mission too, we might have promised someone (against our better judgement) that we'd build them a 9 Kerbal Ike Base just so they'd front us some money.

Anyway, let's lift off! Hmmm we might want to check our thrust-to-weight ratio here. I'm actually impressed the launch pad didn't collapse under the stress.

OK Valentina, see that yellow line? It's a class-A asteroid we recently discovered that's set to impact on the Northern Continent. We need you to save the day!

Although if I had realized the asteroid had such a high inclination I probably would have launched us into a non-equatorial orbit. Good thing we have a lot of extra fuel for plane-changing.

And after a lot of tricky orbit changes and burns, we made it! Asteroid YMP-395 you're not going to get away from us!

And got ya! A few alarming messages scrolled by, but that's because we have another contract for a Class-C asteroid around Minmus and mission control was "helpfully" telling us that this one was the wrong size.

And adjusting the orbit so there's no impact. We have lots of extra delta-V too, so why not see if we can put it in a useful orbit. Maybe make a base or something.

Hmmm we circularized OK but the best we could do was 25° inclincation. Better than nothing! Although we forgot to provide a way for Valentina to get home. Hmmm.

I was putting off this mission forever thinking it would be hard, but it turns out that saving the world from asteroid impact is easier than returning a few crates of rocks from the Mun. Who would have guessed.

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