Gilly

Gilly/Data

Gilly is a tiny asteroid and the only natural satellite of Eve. Gilly is the smallest celestial body in the Kerbol system. Landing on Gilly is challenging due to its very low mass, steep slopes, and highly eccentric orbit, making it very easy to overthrust engines or send a spacecraft tumbling. Gilly's odd shape and fast rotation give the surface near the peaks an apparent velocity near 5 m/s. The nav-ball of a lander securely parked on the surface may still display "Orbit" and a small non-zero lateral speed. To prevent tumbling upon landing, you may need to perform a final velocity trim by eye. Escaping Gilly, is much easier — the EVA jetpack can easily put a lone Kerbal into orbit or set him on an escape trajectory.

Gilly has the least gravity of all bodies in the Kerbol system, with half of Jool's moon Pol due to its extremely small mass and size. A Kerbal can jump over 1000 meters on this moon. Gilly's gravity makes it ideal for very low fuel interplanetary missions. Gilly also has an irregular orbit, so catching the moon is a bit harder.

An unplanned encounter with Gilly is unlikely when approaching Eve, even if player's trajectory is near the plane of Gilly's orbit. This is because Gilly's sphere of influence is very small relative to the semi-major axis of its orbit — in fact, no other moon in the game has a smaller SOI-to-semi-major-axis ratio.

Gilly was once even more dangerous to land on due to a clipping bug with the collision mesh. This problem was fixed in version 0.17.1.

Topography

The topographic map of Gilly.

The surface of Gilly is extremely dynamic and uneven, with many steep slopes and smooth areas. Gilly has the lowest mass and gravitational force. Due to its minuscule mass and gravitational force, it does not have an atmosphere. Gilly's color might come from a high content of solid carbon. This moon is considered a captured asteroid. When terrain scatters are enabled in the settings menu, you can see small rocks on the surface.

Gravity

The gravity of Gilly is extremely low with only 0.5% of Kerbin's surface gravity. Because of this, it is very impractical to walk on Gilly; a jumping Kerbal will usually take around 200 seconds to return to the surface. This makes jetpacks a necessity to move around the moon practically. The low gravity also makes it very difficult to get into an encounter since it makes the sphere of influence so miniscule. On the other hand, landing and starting a craft is very easy to accomplish as they weigh far less than usual.

Reference Frames

Gilly/RefFrames

Gallery

An unsuccessful touchdown attempt in 0.17. Note the landing legs clipping through terrain.
Topographical image of Gilly.
Screenshot123.png

A successful EVA landing.
A topografic height map of Gilly as at Version 0.18.2 made with the ISA MapSat plugin
A succesful probe landing. You can see small rocks at the surface in the background.