The low-cost Project Morpheus lander prototype, designed to carry
cargo to the moon and other space destinations, lifted off the ground
successfully but then failed its first autonomous free-flight test at
the Kennedy Space Center.

Fire crews rushed to extinguish the flames of Morpheus, large enough
to carry 1,100 pounds of cargo to the moon, such as a humanoid robot, a
small rover or a small laboratory to convert moon dust to oxygen.

"A hardware component failure, which prevented it from maintaining
stable flight," was to blame, NASA said, noting that its engineers are
examining test data to determine what caused the failure.

"Failures such as these were anticipated prior to the test, and are
part of the development process for any complex spaceflight hardware,"
the space agency said in a statement.

"What we learn from these tests will help us build the best possible system in the future."



NASA has so far spent $7 million on the project, which aims to
provide an environmentally friendly vehicle to land on the moon,
asteroids and other surfaces in outer space.

It features a new propulsion system with oxygen and methane, both
considered green fuels that are better for the environment than the
rocket fuels NASA usually uses. They could be manufactured on other
planets as well, according to the space agency.

The incident took place just days after NASA safely landed a robotic
rover on Mars with the goal of finding traces of life that may have once
existed on the Red Planet.