Skip to footer

Unmanned NASA spacecraft explodes spectacularly

An SUV-sized lunar lander had barely gotten off the ground when a hardware failure sent it toppling to the ground, where it then proceeded to explode. Nobody was hurt.  

|
Joe Bibby/NASA
NASA's Morpheus lander prototype and the new hazard field at Kennedy Space Center in Florida are seen in this view. Image released on August 2.

An experimental, "green" NASA lander crashed during its first free-flight test today (Aug. 9), erupting in a ball of flame when it hit the ground.

The unmanned Morpheus lander, which could one day deliver payloads to the moon or other solar system bodies, barely got off the pad around 12:40 p.m. EDT (1640 GMT) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida before toppling over and exploding.

"During today's free-flight test of the Project Morpheus vehicle, it lifted off the ground and then experienced a hardware component failure, which prevented it from maintaining stable flight," NASA officials said in a statement. "No one was injured, and the resulting fire was extinguished by KSC fire personnel."

"Engineers are looking into the incident, and the agency will release information as it becomes available," the statement added.

The Morpheus lander is powered by liquid oxygen and methane propellants, which are safer and cheaper to operate than traditional fuels and can be stored for longer periods in space, NASA officials say. Morpheus is also testing out automated landing-hazard avoidance technology, which would use lasers to spot dangerous boulders or craters on the surface of another world.

Prior to today's free-flight test, the experimental lander was tested in a series of tethered flights at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, as well as one at KSC last Friday (Aug. 3). The Johnson center oversees the project, which has reportedly cost about $7 million over the last 2 1/2 years.

The robotic Morpheus lander, which is about the size of an SUV, was built and assembled at JSC and the facilities of private spaceflight firm Armadillo Aerospace.

The vehicle could deliver about 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of cargo to the moon, NASA officials say. With some modifications, its precision landing system could also be used to help a probe rendezvous with an asteroid in deep space.  

Morpheus set off a grass fire at JSC during a tethered test flight in June 2011. Nobody was hurt in that incident, either.  

Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also onFacebook and Google+.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Unmanned NASA spacecraft explodes spectacularly
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0809/Unmanned-NASA-spacecraft-explodes-spectacularly
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe