Grasshopper “divert test” took place on August 13th, 2013.

The 60 seconds flight can be seen on SpaceX’s YouTube channel. The soundtrack in this 3D animation is from that recording.

Animation prepared in Blender using Keyframes.

1. Blender - First, I have created an “Empty” object and inserted 3 initializing keyframes (X+Z location / Y rotation), setting the interpolation to “Linear”. Then, I have exported the data in a Collada (.dae) file.
2. Excel - I have edited a trajectory based on the 60 seconds footage from SpaceX.
3. Notepad++ - I have edited the Collada file, which is simply an ASCII text file. (Look for the tag <library_animations>)
4. Blender - In Blender, I have imported the modified Collada file. The animation of the “Empty” object was finally assigned to the Grasshopper.

Illustration adapted from zlsadesign