Testing suborbital rocket navigation on Earth

When planning a mission to another planet, or even the moon, a big challenge is testing the sensors and instruments that actually land the payloads on the planetary surface. In this video, Draper Laboratory demonstrates how their Guidance Embedded Navigator Integration Environment (GENIE) -- a guidance, navigation, and control system -- can control a Xombie suborbital rocket under realistic flight conditions. The tether is just for safety. From Draper Laboratory:

Aircraft available to test NASA instruments today are unable to fly at the desired trajectories for planetary landings, and computer simulations are used to generate that data. However, a GENIE controlled flight vehicle could mimic a spacecraft’s final approach to the Moon and Mars here on Earth. Emerging and advancing future space technologies will then have the opportunity to fly their payloads terrestrially to raise their overall Technology Readiness Level and show that they are ready for use in space.

"NASA Moves Closer to Planetary Landing Demo Capability on Earth with Draper’s GENIE"

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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HahTse

“Starting from the ground” is a realistical flight condition?
KBert

Too loud for my use… the neighbors might complain :(
Chrs

Nice. That’s ridiculously stable, it even recovers well from a perturbation at about 0:13 in.
Mark Langford

Meh, the Delta Clipper could do that nearly twenty years ago, *off* the tether.
- Henry Pootel
  
  And now because it’s being done by private companies not hinging their work on government funding, maybe they’ll stick with it.
Henry Pootel

That thing needs a “big dog” kick to really test it!
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FKHDCIS27XPE6ZFY6MWMN5UYRQ grima

Dang. I was hoping for some serious lateral oscillations that would leave the would-be lander thrashing around like a hooked trout.
- David Pescovitz
  
  I, too, would love to see video evidence of the failures!
robuluz

Whoa! That’s what I call hovering until you run out fuel and then dangle awkwardly on your tether, mofo!
vonskippy

Seems like it will be a lot of work to boost the crane and tether to another planet, or even the moon. Maybe they should make a rocket that can take off and land without the tether.
http://www.kmoser.com kmoser

Lunar Lander!