SpaceX rocket recently achieved its highest leap recorded at 2,440 feet altitude and was able to return to Earth still intact.
The video of the 10-story rocket was captured by a small remote-controlled drone. It is available for viewing in YouTube.
The Grasshopper is a testing rocket designed by SpaceX to do rocket launches to identify the technologies that will allow rockets to withstand the pressure of space flights and return to the planet in perfect working condition.
SpaceX or Space Exploration Technologies Corp is a Hawthorne-based company that makes space capsules and rockets. It is a commercial supplier of the International Space Station and had made two resupply trips so far.
The company was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, the L.A. billionaire who had earlier announced his Hyperloop transport system that will allow the public access to a 35-minute travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
Currently, the space transport company goal is to create a new rocket which can fly in space then return and land vertically positioned to its launch pad. Previous rockets only burn up as they reënter the high-pressured atmosphere.
The company has done several successions of tests for the Grasshopper in Texas. It was successful in its low-altitude tests and will soon move the launch pads to a commercial spaceport in New Mexico.
The SpaceX test flight was launched October 7. The Grasshopper rocket blasted off, remained suspended in space, returned and landed safe and intact on its launch pad.
This new attempt spells huge savings from reusable rockets. Big savings were practiced too when using the reusable system of retired space shuttles but they have undergone very little use and involved months of tedious repair.
Now, because the Grasshopper was designed to be reusable, the successful launch proves that SpaceX has developed a cost-effective way to develop and run its rockets.
