The private space agency SpaceX has a new record flight carried out with its Grasshopper rocket. The Grasshopper made a test run, where he is up to 250 meters increased then straight to countries.
Most rockets are only suitable for single use, but SpaceX, PayPal founder Elon Musk started the company, is developing reusable rockets. That should be the cost per launch significantly press; the different steps cost a lot of money and it takes time to get a rocket ready for launch. One of the systems for the first stage of the Falcon rockets, to mountains, is a missile system that not only vertically upwards, but also vertically, a landing, a so-called vtvl system: an abbreviation for vertical takeoff, vertical landing.
A prototype for that system is a rocket that the Grasshopper is called. During a previous test flight made this 32-metre-high rocket flight to an altitude of 80 metres. A few days ago took the testraket, which largely consists of the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket with a single Merlin engine, an altitude of 250 metres. SpaceX has published images of the test flight, which is 61 seconds, on his YouTube channel. That is to see how the Grasshopper takes off and a few seconds at a height of 250 feet still hanging and then again vertically to land on the place from which he ascended.