alt Hacker NewsCan anyone explain this to an idiot like to me? I follow information tech, but am pretty ignorant on engineering/space.
I recall the SpaceX chopsticks catch from about a year ago, which looked great.
This looks similar (heavy thing lands smoothly on a platform) but I gather it's very different from the comments?
Previously they successfully caught the booster returning to the launch site from ~100 km about ~10 minutes from launch.
Here they caught the upper stage ,called starhip, which went to ~260 km orbit, deployed 50 tons of satellites and after 22 hours shed its orbital velocity and manuevered to be caught with centimeter precision. :)