SpaceX Grasshopper rocket has reached its higher altitude yet, 820 feet, before hovering its way back to a graceful landing.
This is a new record for the project that aims at developing a fully reusable rocket, which, essentially, after propelling the spaceships out of Earth’s gravity can land by descending in hover mode.
Not long ago, in March, in a similar test the rocket reached 262.8 feet before hovering its way back down again.
At the time, in a Twitter message, SpaceX founder and CEO said, "Grasshopper rocket flies up 250m, holds against wind and lands."
The Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing (VTVL) vehicle (as the Grasshopper is known), is regarded as a possible future for commercially viable reusable rockets.
Historically, rockets a one-use-only devices which makes them very expensive. SpaceX is committed to change that model with the technologies like the Grasshopper, capable of landing safely, in the same upright position it was in during lift-off.
Grasshopper is equipped with a first-stage tank from the SpaceX Flacon 9 rocket, one Merlin-1D engine and four steel landing legs, debuted last September with a 6-foot hop. Near the end of last year, it reached an altitude of 131 feet, followed by its 160-feet flight in March.
In 2010, SpaceX became the first private company to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit. Two years later the company founded by one of the Paypal co-founders, again made history when its Dragon spacecraft successfully docked at the International Space Station (ISS), swapped payloads and returned to Earth --- for the first time.
