OLBERS BASE on VESTA 1.0

OLBERS BASE on VESTA - v1.0 - February 16, 2026 - by drgullen
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I. Intro and Description
II. Installation Procedure
III. Credits and Recommendations
IV. Pad Frequencies
V. Questions/Comments


I. INTRO and DESCRIPTION
===================
I have been an orbinaut for a long time and have downloaded many addons from this terrific community, but this is the first time I have contributed something of my own, so I hope you like it.

You've landed on plenty of moons and planets no doubt, but have you ever landed on an asteroid? Here's your chance! This is just a simple base that I put together, located in the extreme southern region of the asteroid Vesta, which is included with Orbiter 2024. The base is located more than 32km beneath the surface in a crater. It comes with 2 landing pads, both large enough to handle an XR5. It has a quick day/night cycle with the sun rising and setting about every 5.5 hours, giving you about 2 hours of sunlight while the sun is up.

My inspiration for this was finding Pioneer's base that he has placed in the north. I link to his base in the credits below, so with both of these installed, you could land on one, refuel, then do a quick one-half of an orbit and land on the other for a fun challenge!

I've named it Olbers Base as a nod to Heinrich Olbers who discovered Vesta on March 29, 1807 which was just a few years after he discovered another asteroid now known as Pallas.


II. INSTALLATION PROCEDURE
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Simply extract the contents of the zip file to your root Orbiter directory (for example, in my case, it is C:\Orbiter2024). Nothing will be overwritten, unless I update this mod in the future.

NOTE: I have included a different version of the texture for the default landing pads. In this zip file, it is called Lpad01NEW.dds so that I don't overwrite your existing one. If you want to use it though, you'll need to backup your current pad and then rename Lpad01NEW.dds to Lpad01.dds, otherwise the default pads will be at the base and not the ones you see in the screenshots. I credit the author of these pads below.


III. CREDITS and RECOMMENDATIONS
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Northern Vesta Base by Pioneer: https://www.orbiter-forum.com/resources/northern-vesta-base.634/download

Landing Pad by Aztronut66 (Pad already ncluded in the zip file, but here is the link to the full mod): https://www.orbiter-forum.com/resources/landing-pad01-replacement-1-1.3629/download

BaseSync 3.3 MFD by ADSWNJ: https://www.orbiter-forum.com/resources/basesyncmfd-3-3-for-orbiter-2016.2705/download

Hover MFD 1.1.3 by Mythos: https://www.orbiter-forum.com/resources/hovermfd-1-1-3-for-orbiter-2016.236/download

Parking Brake MFD by asbjos: https://www.orbiter-forum.com/resources/parking-brake.3105/download

XR5 Vanguard by dbeachy1 (REQUIRED FOR THE INCLUDED SCENARIO): https://www.orbiter-forum.com/resources/xr5-official-for-orbiter-2024.5645/download


As I said, it was finding Pioneer's original Vesta base that inspired me to put this one together. I highly recommend you install his base as well, giving you two distinctly different locations to land on with Vesta. The link to his mod is above.

Also, the landing pad itself from Aztronut66's mod is already included in this zip file (see II. INSTALLATION PROCEDURE section), but there's a link to his entire mod above.

I use a combination of BaseSync and Hover MFDs in order to align myself with the base. When you are on the opposite side of Vesta from the base, turn Retrograde and then lower your PeA to around 50k. At the next node on BaseSync, align with the base as close as possible. After that, once you're within 100k of the base, engage Hover MFD using NAV1 as the heading, Hover as the mode and Lin Nav set to Taxi. I leave the Altitude values disengaged, but I engage Horizontal Speed (initially set to 250, then 50 once within 10k of the base, then 2 once within 2k of the base), Target Distance (set to 0), Brake Rate (set to 80) and VS To Target. Make sure your Retro and Hover doors are open and make sure Soft Landing is enabled in Hover MFD 'cause you'll be comin' in hot! Links to BaseSync and Hover MFDs are above.

If you've never flown one of Altea Aerospace's spacecrafts, give this mod a try with the XR5! It's quite the ride down into the crater! The link to the wonderful XR5 is above.

Also, if you experience sliding when at this base, use asbjos' great Parking Brake MFD to keep you in place on the base (link is above).


IV. PAD FREQUENCIES
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Due to the fact that the base location has a negative altitude, the ILS on the pads don't always work properly. For this reason, I have no ILS frequencies defined for the pads, but there are two VOR frequencies to use, one for each pad.

PAD 1: 116.1
PAD 2: 116.2

Set NAV1 in your COM/NAV to the frequency for whichever pad you wish to land on and then set NAV1 as the heading source in Hover MFD for a fast, but smooth touchdown on the pad.


V. QUESTIONS/COMMENTS
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IMPORTANT NOTE: I used the default Vesta that comes with Orbiter 2024 when I put this base together. If you have any custom Vesta asteroid mod installed, the base might not appear properly. In that case, you might have to try moving it to a different location to be able to land on it.

If you have any other questions or comments about this mod, feel free to post them on the "OLBERS BASE on VESTA" thread on the forum.

Cheers,
drgullen