SpaceX’s Grasshopper flies 820 feet, tripling its March 7th leap. Grasshopper is a 10-story Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing (VTVL) vehicle that SpaceX has designed to test the technologies needed to return a rocket back to Earth intact. While most rockets are designed to burn up in the atmosphere during reentry, SpaceX’s rockets are being designed to return to the launch pad for a vertical landing.

Book Review: Luna 9: The Mission Report
Back in 1966, Luna 9 became the first spacecraft to soft-land on the Moon. Apogee Books has provided an English-language NASA translation of a detailed report originally released by the USSR Academy of Sciences.


