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Can SpaceX land a rocket with 1/2 cm accuracy?
No. But they don’t need to. In preparation for the 5th test flight of Starship, SpaceX announced that they would try to catch the booster using “Mechazilla chopsticks.” Later during pre…
I don’t know what SpaceX is using to estimate the position and orientation on their rockets or their exact control schemes, and I might be missing some information that they’ve made public, but I am well versed in what goes into the design space and can hopefully make some good guesses. Falcon 9 shows us that SpaceX is very good at performing the hoverslam maneuver for a soft touchdown on a hard surface, and for the same reasons as before the Super Heavy booster should be easier to control. While the size of the booster gives the impression of impossible GNC precision needed to land back in the chopstick arms, it should not come as a surprise that SpaceX actually developed a system with large safety margins using sound engineering principles.
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