Dear Diary...
NASA's Kennedy Space Center informed the world via twitter, of the prototype testing on Thursday. Morpheus, god of dreams and sleep in Greek mythology, is a lander designed for a mission on the moon. It's basically a transporter, that carries around 500 Kg (1,100 pounds) worth of cargo, like a robot, or a lab that converts moon dust into oxygen and I love the sound of that. For more information on the mission, check its official website. Sadly, it's safe to say that things didn't go as planned.
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| NASA's Morpheus, the moon lander |
Here's a video showing the craft's crash a few seconds after its takeoff, probably because of a hardware component failure, even though Morpheus is actually the second vertical test bed built by the project
team. The first, Pixel, was literally constructed from spare parts, in an attempt to try out “lean development” engineering practices. Also, Morpheus was considered eco-friendly because it relies on liquid-oxygen and methane instead of the usual toxic fuels.
In a span of two and half years, the machine cost about $7 million, NASA officials called the failure a disappointment but confirmed that the Morpheus
program will continue testing with a new lander in a matter of months. This is rocket science after all, where failures are extremely educational, and I'm officially waiting for the next generation Moon Lander.
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| NASA's Morpheus, the moon lander |
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