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