Soft landing
A soft landing is any type of aircraft, rocket or spacecraft landing that does not result in significant damage to or destruction of the vehicle or its payload, as opposed to a hard landing. The average vertical speed of a soft landing should be about per second or less.
File:Falcon Heavy Side Boosters landing on LZ1 and LZ2 - 2018.jpg|thumb|348x348px|Two Falcon Heavy side boosters performing a Soft Landing via VTVL in 2018
A soft landing can be achieved by
- Parachute—often this is into water.
- Vertical rocket power using retrorockets, often referred to as VTVL — first achieved on a suborbital trajectory by Bell Rocket Belt and on an orbital trajectory by the Surveyor 1.
- Horizontal landing, most aircraft and some spacecraft, such as the Space Shuttle, land this way accompanied with a parachute.
- Being caught in midair, as done with Corona spy satellites and followed by some other form of landing.
- Reducing landing speed by impact with the body's surface, known as lithobraking.
File:Airbus A380.jpg|thumb|An Airbus A380 performing a soft landing at the Paris Air Show 2007|360x360px