Soft Landing (aeronautics)

Falcon 9 first stage landing on Droneship

A soft landing is any type of

aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines ...

rocket A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely fr ...

spacecraft A spacecraft is a vehicle or machine designed to fly in outer space. A type of artificial satellite, spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, Earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, p ...

landing that does not result in significant damage to or destruction of the vehicle or its payload, as opposed to a

hard landing A hard landing occurs when an aircraft or spacecraft hits the ground with a greater vertical speed and force than in a normal landing. Landing is the final phase in flight, in which the aircraft returns to the ground. The average vertical sp ...

. The average vertical speed in a soft landing should be about per second or less. A soft landing can be achieved by *

Parachute A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag or, in a ram-air parachute, aerodynamic lift. A major application is to support people, for recreation or as a safety device for aviators, who ...

—often this is into water. * Vertical rocket power using

retrorockets A retrorocket (short for ''retrograde rocket'') is a rocket engine providing thrust opposing the motion of a vehicle, thereby causing it to decelerate. They have mostly been used in spacecraft, with more limited use in short-runway aircraft land ...

, often referred to as

VTVL Vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) is a form of takeoff and landing for rockets. Multiple VTVL craft have flown. The most widely known and commercially successful VTVL rocket is SpaceX's Falcon 9 first stage. VTVL technologies were deve ...

(vertical landing referred to as

VTOL A vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft is one that can take off and land vertically without relying on a runway. This classification can include a variety of types of aircraft including helicopters as well as thrust-vectoring fixed-win ...

, is usually for aircraft landing in a level attitude, rather than rockets) — first achieved on a suborbital trajectory by

Bell Rocket Belt The Bell Rocket Belt is a low-power rocket propulsion device that allows an individual to safely travel or leap over small distances. It is a type of rocket pack. Overview Bell Aerosystems began development of a rocket pack which it called the ...

and on an orbital trajectory by the

Surveyor 1 Surveyor 1 was the first lunar soft-lander in the uncrewed Surveyor program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, United States). This lunar soft-lander gathered data about the lunar surface that would be needed for the cre ...

. * Horizontal landing, most aircraft and some spacecraft, such as the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program na ...

, land this way. * Being caught in midair, as done with Corona spy satellites and followed by some other form of

landing Landing is the last part of a flight, where a flying animal, aircraft, or spacecraft returns to the ground. When the flying object returns to water, the process is called alighting, although it is commonly called "landing", "touchdown" or ...

. * Reducing landing speed by impact with the body's surface, known as

lithobraking Lithobraking is a whimsical euphemism used by spacecraft engineers to refer to a spacecraft impacting the surface of a planet or moon.McDowell, Jonathan (2020)"Lithobraking" ''Astronautical Glossary''. Retrieved May 16, 2022. The word was coined by ...

. Rocketry {{Rocket-stub