Vessel Details
When you select an individual vessel or asteroid from the Operations Menu or the Orbital View you will be taken to its details page where you can learn a huge amount of information about the vessel's current state and its history. The details page is broken down into three main sections. The Info Box contains a visual look at the vessel (not usually available for asteroids) and detailed information about the background and current state. The Data Box contains varying amounts of details about the operational status of the vessel. The Content Area can provide additional information depending on the current state of the vessel.
Unless otherwise specified, the term "vessel" from hereon out refers both kerbal craft and asteroids.
It's important to first understand that all vessel data pages comprise of various states they are in throughout the course of their mission, which can be accessed by the dropdown lists at the bottom of the Data Box. The data shown for a vessel when it is first loaded is always the most recent state, unless the URL includes a &ut command, which will direct the page to pull data from that time period rather than the present time. Any selections made by the Operations Menu will load to the most recent state.
The image shown in the Info Box is meant to represent the current state of the vessel, which means it will change to depict changes happening to the vessel, such as staging or damage. Pay attention to the backgrounds of the vessel images as well, as they can not only depict location but time period if bases or buildings are shown in the background.
The state of the vessel is given at the bottom of the Info Box, and clicking for Additional Information will open a dialog box with further details of the vessel, its mission and its current status at the time of this state. The dialog can be moved and will update with any state changes when selecting past or future events. It will always open over the vessel image.
In some states the Info Box will display a series of dots over the vessel when the mouse is on the image. Hovering your cursor over them will bring up detailed information about the part under that dot or pointed to by that dot. The dots will not display when the cursor is off the image, but they should appear and fade out after initial data load to at least let you know they are there.
There are a total of 16 data fields that can be used to show additional details about the current state of the vessel and not all are currently being used by the Operations Tracker nor will all appear at all times - only if the vessel has that data to display will the field be shown. All image icons that appear in a data field can be hovered over with the mouse cursor for a tooltip with additional information. Text can also contain additional details in tooltips, identified by a dotted underline. The data fields will always appear in the following order:
- Mission Start Date - This can refer to various events such as the time a vessel was launched, detached from a carrier, or discovered. The date displayed will contain a tooltip with additional information such as the current Mission Elapsed Time if it is still ongoing, the actual start time if you are viewing the date of a scrubbed launch, or the total elapsed mission time and how it ended if it has been completed or terminated
- Average Velocity - For vessels in space this will display the average velocity, in kilometers per second, it travels along its trajectory - which could be an orbit or a hyperbolic escape path. The data field also has a tooltip showing specific speeds at its highest and lowest point along the current trajectory
- Periapsis - The lowest point, in kilometers, along its current trajectory. For hyperbolic orbits that could mean simply the altitude at the time of the update if the vessel is already climbing out of the SOI
- Apoapsis - The highest point, in kilometers, along its current trajectory. For hyperbolic orbits this does not necessarily mean the point at which it exits an SOI
- Eccentricity - A value representing the shape of an orbit, with 0 being perfectly circular and >1 being hyperbolic (although its worth noting values <1 can still exit an SOI that is small enough)
- Inclination - The degree to which the vessel's orbit is tilted to the planet's equator
- Orbital Period - The amount of time, in seconds, it takes for the vessel to complete one orbit. This value can be unavailable if the orbit is hyperbolic or on an escape trajectory. If it is available, a tooltip will convert the seconds to years, days, hours, minutes and seconds as well as look back through the vessel's orbital history since entering this SOI and calculating how many times it has orbited the body
- Crew - An icon will be given for each crew member aboard the vessel with a tooltip that includes their name, the date they boarded and their current elapsed time aboard in years and days. Clicking on the crew icon will take you to their Crew Details page
- Resources - All the resources currently aboard the vessel are listed by their icons in this field. Details on the current amount and total capacity for each resource can be found in their tooltips
- Comms - Any communications devices are displayed here with either an antenna or dish icon to denote their transmission type. Tooltips are available to give details on signal delay and what Deep Space Network station or other vessel the dishes are currently targeting
- Additional Resources - Other data pertaining to the vessel and its mission not available via the Operations Tracker will show up here as icons you can click on to jump to the resource location. These can include additional mission reports, flight analysis writeups and detailed telemetry data, among other things
- Last Update - The time at which this update for the vessel was posted, which means all the data in the Data Box was valid prior to this time (for example new crew members could have come aboard but the orbital information could still be the same as the previous update). Tooltip information will convert this to local time of the user and also include a count of distance traveled in kilometers up to this point, if available
This area at the bottom of the page can be used differently depending on the current mission state being displayed. All the possibilities are given examples below.
NOTE: The dynamic map is currently a bit finicky on load sometimes but can generally be fixed by selecting the Fullscreen option beneath the Zoom controls or upsizing the map
Various images depicting mission states or information such as blueprints can be shown with tooltips on mouse over that will contain more information. These images are completely freeform and stick to no structure or format and simply apply to the current state of the current mission.
Some states early on in the mission can use the dynamic map to show the location from where the vessel is being launched on the surface of Kerbin
A basic extension of the launch location feature has the icon move with each vessel state during a launch ascent to show the progress of the vessel as it travels downrange, up into the air and back down during its flight
A more complex use of the dynamic map is plotting the path of a vessel on orbit across the surface of the body, which can at times be a lengthy computation. The Operations Tracker will always try to render 3 complete orbits of a vessel, successively colored green, yellow and red. If the total time of 3 orbits exceeds 100,000 seconds then a notice will appear asking if 1 orbit should be rendered instead of 3. Regardless of the choice made by the user, the calculations can be stopped at any time and the results will still be plotted. So if you go for 3 and decide it's taking too long you can still see what was calculated up to that point. Once a plot is displayed, a button will appear on the map allowing you to re-run the calculations from the current time to refresh the data.
Clicking on the representative marker for the vessel, which will depend on the vessel type, will open a popup with information on its current position, velocity and altitude above sea level.
Hovering the cursor over an orbital line will popup information on which orbit it is and at what time and date the vessel will arrive at that location over the surface. Clicking on the line will display even more data such as the velocity and altitude the vessel will be at that point in time.
If you leave the vessel page while a calculation is running, it will be paused. Returning to the same vessel page will cause the calculations to continue from where they left off. If you switch to viewing another vessel on orbit that can be plotted for 3 periods you will be prompted to toss or continue the paused calculations for the other vessel. If the other vessel asks for your choice in plotting 1 or 3 orbits, not selecting an option will keep the paused calculation data available for continuation if you return to that vessel page. Once the calculations are complete, they do not have to be run again when you come back to that vessel page as long as you haven't calculated a plot for another vessel, begun a new session by closing and re-opening the tab or refreshing the page in the browser.
Apoapsis and Periapsis markers will appear along the orbit and can be clicked on to see at what date and time the vessel will reach these positions and how much time remains until then. Once a marker is passed it will move to the next orbit or be removed from the map if no further orbits have been plotted.
Individual orbits can have their visibility toggled via the Layers control, and any markers associated with that orbit will also be shown/hidden.
Surface plotting of vessels on orbit will only be done if the orbital data loaded for that state matches the orbital data loaded for the Orbital View, which is the current orbital data. If you peruse back in the mission history and reach a state where the orbit was different than it is for the current time then you will see a static representation of the orbit from the ecliptic and polar viewpoints to get an idea of its previous shape. The viewpoints are consistent across orbital changes so moving through the history states you can get an accurate sense of relative motion in the changes made to the orbit over time.
This orbital view can also be used for current orbital states if the body being orbited has no surface map data. In this instance an information box will also appear to still give current position, velocity and altitude data for the vessel over the surface, which can't yet be displayed.
The surface map shown for vessels is the same exact map shown for bodies, so more information on using the map can be found in the Surface Map section. However there is one distinct difference in that the map view for vessels is much smaller than that for bodies. This can be changed with a map button under the Zoom control that is shown only when viewing vessels. This button with an Up Arrow will increase the size to match that of the map displayed from a body view. The button will switch to a Down Arrow and will allow the map to be downsized again to display the vessel details once more. Additionally vessel plots will not display when switching over to the body view of the surface using the Globe icon under the Zoom control.