Morpheus Aborts, Then Recovers For a Second Go In Tether Test

The above video should satisfy your daily need for rocket foom. Morpheus — a NASA testbed for vertical landing systems — did two firing tests this week that produced a fair amount of the usual fire and smoke, as you can see above.

You’ll actually see two separate firings in that video. In the first one, the lander strayed out of its safety zone and did a soft abort. The second test, NASA stated, “was a complete success.”

The first lander of the program crashed and burned in a test failure in August 2012, but officials recently praised the program for the progress it has made since then.

“Although a hardware failure led to the loss of the original vehicle last August, the failure and our internal investigation gave us valuable insight into areas that needed improvement,” a Project Morpheus blog post from May stated.

“The vehicle may look largely the same as the previous version, but there are numerous changes that have been incorporated.  We have now implemented 70 different upgrades to the vehicle and ground systems to both address potential contributors to the test failure, and also to improve operability and maintainability.”

In the long run, NASA aims to use Morpheus as a “vertical test bed” for environmentally friendly propellants, as well as for automatic advances in landing and hazard detection.

The vehicle is advertised as big enough to land 1,100 pounds of cargo on the moon if it was placed nearby.

Check out more information about the program at the Project Morpheus website.