General Question Interplanetary trajectory plotting

[HAES2010]

Hi there. I have just recently downloaded Orbiter to see if it can be used to plot the optimised trajectories for a fourth year university engineering project. I have had a quick look through the manual and some scenarios but am really after a quick answer as to whether this is the right tool before I invest too much time into learning more. Briefly, the mission is a manned sample return mission to a near earth asteroid. We have chosen asteroid 1989ML as the target and have the ephemeris data etc. Is it possible to just input basic osculating data and get a heliocentric plot of the trajectory? Thanks!

 

[RisingFury]

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: It'll take time...
Download TransX from OrbitHangar.com and then read through a bunch of TransX tutorials.