NASA, SpaceX Share Data on Supersonic Retropropulsion

&quot;The two midwave IR sensors—mounted in a nose pod on the WB-57 and internally on the P-3—were about 60 nm from the rocket when it reignited its engines for supersonic retropropulsion.&quot;<p>They clearly mean Nautical Miles (nm) here, but I did a double-take on my first read through.

&gt; That produced raw images in which the stage appeared 1 pixel wide and 10 pixels long, but subsequent enhancing by specialists at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory improved the resolution dramatically.<p>So, the final resolution was something like... 10x100 pixels? How do you enhance a 1 pixel image? I&#x27;m guessing the two aircraft, at two different altitudes, help ... you get 2 pixels instead of 1.

SpaceX got a lot of help from NASA, especially in regards to pintle engines[1] and this seems like a great way to pay back that transfer of expertise by moving the ball forward. My assumption (clearly incorrect) was that descent could be managed subsonically as the vertical speed at apogee is 0 but of course that stage has been pushing the second stage into its position and so it travelling down range at several k&#x2F;s. Presumably you could deploy some sort of upper drag system which would use atmospheric drag to reorient the stage but you still have the fact that its travelling super sonically when you light the engines. I would love to see the CFD simulation of a exhaust nozzle when going that fast backwards! And then you light it off! I really hope that at some point they figure out how to glue a camera on to that stage so we can see what that looks like.<p>[1] <a href="http://blog.nss.org/?p=1900" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.nss.org&#x2F;?p=1900</a>

&quot;Data-sharing deal will help SpaceX land Falcon 9 on Earth and NASA put humans on Mars&quot;<p>I find the sub-title a bit ironic as (right now) I&#x27;d bet that SpaceX astronauts will beat NASA astronauts to Mars.

This video shows IR footage from one of the planes: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UFjK_CFKgA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=_UFjK_CFKgA</a>

I enjoyed Elon&#x27;s interview on TED. Just when it starts sounding like he&#x27;s smoking a dream-pipe about recycling rockets, he shows a clip of a test landing. Early days, but it&#x27;s amazing. I agree with @smoyer, the guys at SpaceX are ninjas, I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised, because they&#x27;re making insane advances in a relatively short time-frame. Can&#x27;t wait to see what they do next.