4 ms·
At least for Falcon 9, this is true even at minimum thrust. They don't have the ability to hover at all. The rocket is so light when empty that the thrust of a
by ludocode 5y ago
At least for Falcon 9, this is true even at minimum thrust. They don't have the ability to hover at all. The rocket is so light when empty that the thrust of a single engine at minimum throttle during landing is enough to make it take off again. That's why they do a "hoverslam" or "suicide burn" as you described. I assume they still throttle down as much as they can in the last few moments to minimize the impact of imperfections in the landing.
- sgtnoodle 5y agoThey likely just target a trajectory that falls at the center of their throttling capability. The controller can then handle a limited amount of trajectory error by throttling up or down. I.e. if they can throttle down to 70%, then they would compute a trajectory that would nominally require 85% thrust.