In a divert test on August 13, SpaceX’s vertical-landing Grasshopper tried out its first lateral move. With a degree of control difficult to believe, the Grasshopper titled just enough to move 100 m off to the side of the launchpad before reversing the maneuver to land precisely on its liftoff point.
According to SpaceX: Grasshopper is taller than a ten story building, which makes the control problem particularly challenging. Diverts like this are an important part of the trajectory in order to land the rocket precisely back at the launch site after reentering from space at hypersonic velocity.
The Grasshopper is the first credible attempt to make a reusable heavy launch vehicle. Success could dramatically change the cost of doing business in space, making commercialization efforts much more feasible due to reduced launch costs.
Read more at SpaceX.com, but watch the video here!
![A trajectory analysis that used a computational fluid dynamics approach to determine the likely position and velocity histories of the foam (Credits: NASA Ref [1] p61).](http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/fluid-dynamics-trajectory-analysis-50x50.jpg)
This is amazing! Such a shame the camera didn’t zoom out a little so we could the movement relative to the ground. Missed opportunity there.