Undocking from the ISS

After 20 hours of zero gravity fun on the ISS it is time to return to earth. The Docking processor handles the undocking procedure.

When it is time to say good-bye to the ISS, the ISS releases the vessel and the vessel accelerates to escape velocity (10 m/s in our case). This ensures that the vessel is far enough away from the ISS when it starts its de-orbit burn.

There is one manual interaction that is important for the landing phase: You have to set "Baikonur" as target base on the Map MFD. If you don't the Reentry and Landing processors will not find the way to the base! So you should set the base before you leave the ISS...

Process definition

<Step>
  <Label>Undocking from ISS</Label>
  <Processor type="Docking" mode="Release">
    <Var name="StartAt"> T = 51984.09 </Var>
    <Var name="Reference"> ISS </Var>
    <Var name="Port"> 1 </Var>
    <Var name="VRel"> 10.0 </Var>
    <Var name="Cmds"> K </Var>
  </Processor>
</Step>
mode="Release" means the docking processor is going to undock our vessel from the defined target port.

StartAt defines the time to undock.

Reference defines the target we will undock from.

Port is the id of the target port we are currently docked with.

VRel specifies the relative velocity after undocking (in m/s)

Cmds is a (currently ignored) list of commands for the vessel (closing the nose cone).