Armadillo Aerospace has taken some major strides with its FAA-approved suborbital rocket, the STIG-B. Despite encountering difficulties reaching design altitude during testing, the company appears to have mastered the landing side of the equation using a self-guided ramair parachute system.
A flight on December 6 returned the rocket to within 55 meters (180 ft) of the intended recovery point.
Armadillo’s STIG-B is intended to lift 50 kg (110 lbs) of payload to an altitude in excess of 100 km (62 miles). During the recent launch, an early abort prevented reaching the projected altitude. However, the Wamore GPS guided recovery system worked nearly flawlessly (nearly because the landing flare was late), steering the spent rocket back to the launch site.
The recovery system sees the nose of the rocket ejected along with the ballute (i.e. ballon-parachute) when the guided parachute is deployed. This choice was made to avoid the possibility that the nose cone and its attaching lines could tangle with the main parachute. There is an APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System) mounted in the nose cone, which relays GPS locations and allows the nose cone to be easily tracked for recovery using a smartphone GPS locator app.