Outer Wilds

You can take a direct approach to fly to the Sun Station, which I found faster and easier to get consistently right.


Notes that accompany the video clip:
1. Head up to your ship, suit up, buckle in and take off towards the Sun. You want to stay fast and low otherwise you risk the Moon interfering with your flight path. Once you spot the Sun, lock onto it, aim for the centre and continue full thrust straight towards it.

2. After the Sun Station is in full view rounding the horizon of the Sun, you want to roll to the right ( (hold) + ). You want Dark Bramble planet in the top centre of your view, and the lateral movement vector of the Sun visible on the left of screen and fairly steady. You also need to maintain full forward thrust while you do this.

3. You should now be aiming towards the top quarter of the Sun and you accelerate until your approach velocity reaches about 400-450 m/s, then release thrust. When you release thrust, you may notice your approach velocity will decrease - that is ok, you don't need to maintain it.

4. Now wait 1-2 seconds, you should spot the Sun Station coming into view below you. Once the Station and you are passing over the top point of the Sun you can then begin your descent into orbit.

5. Descend by using down thrust (). When you start getting close, release the down thrust momentarily, to avoid crashing into the Sun. Your forward velocity will be slightly fast so that you can catch up to the Station and this should also take you higher off the surface, but you can also up thrust a bit if you need to. You'll need to reverse thrust a bit to slow down, and then continue the down thrust to bring you into low orbit with the Station.

6. Once you're close to the Station you want to position the ship just above the doorway on the left. You need to match the speed and orbit of the Station as close as you can. The autopilot 'match velocity' does not really work for this, so it's better to do it manually. You can take your time at this point, since you should remain in reasonably close orbit with the Station.

7. When you feel confident the movement is matched, unbuckle and open the hatch. You need to do this quickly because it is unlikely that your ship will stay in perfect orbit by itself, and you risk getting stuck in your ship, or flung too far from the Station.

8. Once you've exited the ship, spot the Station doorway and fly yourself into it. The achievement will unlock once you set foot inside.

Manually land at Sun Station

The Sun Station can be found orbiting the Sun at fairly high speed, making the landing very difficult. After looking at the comments/videos posted by fallouthirteen below, I've unlocked this achievement with some skill and a whole lot of patience haha

As per the comment by fallouthirteen
Very helpful! (The videos are also especially helpful) But here is my advice. As you approach the Sun, you're going to want to have the Sun Station orbiting HORIZONTALLY (I did mine with it orbiting clockwise or left around the Sun). Get yourself into a nice orbit at around 2700m like suggested below and make sure your horizontal movement is pretty significant but your up and down movement is minimal.

As the Sun Station approaches you, start to match speed with it, if you're in a good orbit you should only have to mainly worry about speed matching the station, and very mildly keeping yourself from getting sucked into the sun.

Once you're lined up and are able to maneuver your ship right near the Sun Station, you should look into the open doorway and click the Left Stick so you can Match Velocity with that entryway.

Once you think you've got everything lined up nicely and you're moving at the same pace, go ahead and unbuckle and try to open the hatch, if you pop out and can manage to jetpack your way to the door way, the achievement will be yours!

Here is a video of my approach to the Sun Station and matching speed with the doorway: https://gamerdvr.com/gamer/ch1ps/video/85105675

Extra thanks again to fallouthirteen for the awesome videos found in the comments to this solution (they were wiped, see above edit), definitely give them a look if you're struggling!

Couple of things that helped me get it:

I found that approaching the sun with a vertical rotation instead of a horizontal one is much easier. Your brain is probably more accustomed to the flight controls this way, whereas doing it horizontally means you have to adjust your perspective on the controls in addition to the crazy hard orbit.

After taking off from timber hearth, roll the ship clockwise until the bramble is above the sun. This will get you aligned with a near-perfect vertical orbit for the station. Its about a 110 degree rotation clockwise.

Getting the orbit right just takes practice. With the vertical orbit, lock on to the sun, generally keep your crosshair pointed at the horizon line, get up to ~375m/s, then drop acceleration. 375 is roughly the orbital speed of the station from what I could tell. Use the up/down trigger thrusters to maintain your orbit; just like in real life, orbiting is just falling, so that's what it will feel like. Using the downward thrusters feels very weird, like you're trying to crash into the sun, but they're necessary to counteract your forward thrusters.

You'll want to apply small pulses of forward thrust to catch up with the station (and backward if you're approaching too fast, of course). But don't do this until you feel like your altitude is stable and you have control with the up/down thrusters. Any time you apply forward thrust, combine it with a downward thrust. Vice-versa for backward; combine it with an upward thrust. This will help avoid the orbit slingshotting you into space (or straight into the sun). It just takes practice.

You can lock on to the main building of the station once you're close enough (left side if you approach from behind). Do this. As soon as you do, you can of course match velocity. Every time you match velocity, hit that button again, because the velocity of the station is constantly changing. Orbits, space physics, etc. Mash the match velocity button every few seconds.

Position the ship in-between the two structures, facing the interior door/hallway of the large structure. There are two big chevron arrows on it. If you need to, just ram straight into the hallway to help stabilize yourself (you can't actually get the ship into it, but its a nice little hole that helps maintain your stability). Keep the thrusters engaged pushing you against the structure until you feel confident enough to back off a bit. Continue matching velocity non-stop, especially once you back off.

There's some debris between the two stations, so don't back off too far. Like, just back off a wee little bit. This debris tends to move and rotate, so just because you're safe right now doesn't mean you will be in 10 seconds. Because of this, after you back off, continue matching velocity and just wait a few seconds to make sure your distance is stable. Don't worry about rolling. You want your crosshairs pointed down the hallway, maybe biased a little to the "bottom" of the door.

Once the distance feels stable, you can wait until the station is "upright" (relative to your ship). Then, unbuckle, and immediately hit that eject button. If you're lucky and you positioned it right, you'll go flying straight down the hallway and earn the achievement.

Its not easy. I've seen videos of people do it without the eject button, but from my experience its just way way too difficult; the eject button is much easier. You can't reliably "land" the ship anywhere outside of the station. The moment you let off the thrust keeping you pinned to the station your ship is going to float away, so it becomes a race to get to the hatch before you're too far out of orbit. Moreover, the player velocity inheritance after you leave the ship doesn't feel "right", like you aren't totally matched up with the ship velocity. So, better to just not worry about that and eject straight down the hallway.

Having tried several methods to get out the ship and reach the door, I was pretty much pulling my hair out. I couldn't eject in time without getting stuck in my ship due to G-Force. Or by the time I ejected my ship had left the space station and I was drifting off into a Solar Demise
With a lot of good practise you can get quite good at matching the stations orbit path by rolling with 'LB' and getting with the trajectory of the station.
After gently following the station and waiting for it to come back around to me from the rear I then found that it is possible to wedge your ship in the Wrought iron off-shoots of the debris floating there, giving you plenty of time to unbuckle and wait to be in the right spot to leave your ship normally, lock on to the only door, match velocity with 'A' and make your way over. Like the other methods it may take some practise. But I hope this might help for gamers that were stuck like me. Here is the video of my success.


Good Luck.