Masten’s most recent Xombie flight saw the rocket climb to 1,626 feet (496 meters) while simultaneously beginning to fly sideways. With peak altitude reached and a horizontal component to the flight path, the rocket’s guidance system reduced the thrust and Xombie began falling back to earth, accelerating to around 60 mph. This speedy descent took Xombie along a diagonal path designed to simulate a return trajectory from orbit, part of a NASA research project for future planetary landers.
Masten is no stranger to precision rocket flight. The company’s smaller Xoie rocket won the Lunar Lander challenge in 2009, and Xombie has completed several flights. But the small group of rocket scientists in Mojave, California, continues pushing higher and further as the desert city becomes the place to test sub-orbital rocket technology.
Masten continues flight testing an autonomous flight control system developed by Draper Laboratory with NASA. The Guidance Embedded Navigator Integration Environment control system — GENIE, in keeping with NASA’s love of acronyms — is designed to test future guidance technologies, including terrain navigation and hazard detection under actual flight conditions.
The closed-loop guidance system flew Xombie on the re-entry trajectory to a point nearly 1,000 feet away from the launch pad before slowing it down and making precise landing at a predetermined point.
NASA is testing the system as part of its Precision LANding Exploration Technology demonstration program. PLANET test flights use the reusable Xombie rocket to boost the guidance payload to increasing altitudes, therefore increasing approach speeds back to earth. The guidance system uses the relatively inexpensive Xombie platform to develop the sensors and algorithms for one day landing on Mars, the moon or an asteroid.