the the edge According to his report, the two young men – Joe Barnard and Aryan Kapoor – have been working for years on the design of small rockets and, among other things, on how to achieve a landing without the help of a parachute. As the portal writes, after numerous failures, both of them managed to recreate the landing capabilities of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket – true, they did it on a much smaller scale, but (unlike the company) they did not have a billion-dollar budget at their disposal.
Joe Barnard (who studies music at the university) spent seven years designing and building the rockets and their various components, including the unique thrust control mechanism for the engines.
With this mechanism—which relies on a pair of servo motors—he can turn the thrust of the rocket engine in any direction, at an angle of five degrees. He then combines all of this with sensors and custom software to ensure that his rockets stay vertical throughout the flight, all the way to landing—as you can see in the video below.
Additionally, using 3D-printed metal parts, Barnard has also developed a way to control the amount of thrust produced by solid-fuel rocket engines, which cannot be shut down once fired. What he does is place a pair of adjustable ceramic blades close together to disperse the engine exhaust and reduce the amount of lift generated, making it easier to land in a controlled manner.
Another young man, Aryan Kapoor (still in high school), has been working on a similar rocket for the past three years. His rocket uses the same thrust control principle as Barnard, with one difference: it uses flight data from the barometer and accelerometer to determine exactly when to fire the secondary engine for a safe landing (as seen in the video below).
The landing legs of the Kapoor rocket are also much simpler than those of the Barnard rocket. These are not retractable legs, but each has a plastic syringe attached to rubber bands to help absorb the force of landing, improving the chances of the rocket not flipping over after hitting the ground.
Hobby rocket makers obviously can't compete with SpaceX and others, but as The Verge points out, getting their rockets to land vertically unassisted after launch is a huge challenge for them.
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