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Comment by schiffern

Incredible time-lapse of the landing, from Elon Musk's instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BVxysOlA04j/

The yawing motion at the beginning of the video is because they moved the drone ship to avoid stormy seas, so the stage had to thrust sideways to retarget. In calm weather SpaceX positions the ship right along the ballistic path, so the stage only needs to pitch up and "flip."

You can also see the grid fins "pulling up" through the atmosphere to bleed off as much speed as possible. I described the optimization a while back. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14288431

Fantastic job to everyone at SpaceX!

parent schiffern 9 years ago

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