There were no injuries in
the failed test of the lander, dubbed "Morpheus." The craft had gone
through several previous exercises in which it was hung from a crane,
but Thursday was to have been its first free flight.
Instead, the prototype
rose a short distance, rolled over and slammed into the ground. The
craft caught fire immediately and exploded about 30 seconds later.
"The vehicle itself is
lost," Jon Olansen, the Morpheus project manager, told reporters. "But
we are working currently on gathering more data and information to
understand what occurred in the test and how we can learn from it and
move forward."
Olansen said operators
have recovered memory devices from the wreckage and will be pulling the
data off of them for clues to the cause of the accident.
"From early indications,
it seems to be within our guidance navigation control system, seems to
point toward hardware," Olansen said.
In a written statement,
NASA said failure is "part of the development process for any complex
spaceflight hardware," and designers will learn from whatever caused
Thursday's crash.
The Morpheus lander is
designed to carry up to 1,100 pounds of cargo for a future moon mission.
Its engines are fueled partly by methane, which the agency says is
easier to handle and store than other propellants such as liquid
hydrogen or hydrazine.
Olansen said the space
agency has spent about $7 million on the project over two and a half
years, and the test lander lost Thursday was "in the $500,000 class."
Another one is currently under construction at the Johnson Space Center
in Houston and may be complete in two to three months.
"We want to make sure that what we learn today gets applied to that next vehicle," he said.
August 10, 2012 -- Updated 0114 GMT (0914 HKT)
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