Morpheus Lander Crashes and Burns
NASA’s “lean and green” Morpheus lander crashed and burned during a free flight test at Kennedy Space Center today, August 9, at approximately 12:46 pm EDT.
Watch a video of the failed test after the jump:
Designed in-house at Johnson Space Center, the Morpheus lander is engineered to use a liquid oxygen and methane fuel — relatively cheap materials that can be stored easily and would be available resources on other worlds besides Earth.
Morpheus’ first successful tethered flight had just occurred a few days earlier, on August 3.
It IS still rocket science, after all…
Images: NASA TV
Recent Posts
Neutron Stars With Less Mass Than A White Dwarf Might Exist, and LIGO and Virgo Could Find Them
Theoretically a neutron star could have less mass than a white dwarf. If these light…
Webb Observes Protoplanetary Disks that Contradict Models of Planet Formation
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was specifically intended to address some of the greatest…
James Webb’s Big Year for Cosmology
The James Webb Space Telescope was designed and built to study the early universe, and…
A Mission to Dive Titan’s Lakes – and Soar Between Them
Titan is one of the solar system's most fascinating worlds for several reasons. It has…
Top Astronomy Events for 2025
Catching the best sky watching events for the coming year 2025. Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS…
Is the Universe a Fractal?
For decades cosmologists have wondered if the large-scale structure of the universe is a fractal:…