Morpheus Soars in Free Flight 15

NASA’s Project Morpheus prototype lander soars 800 feet above the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on free flight test No. 15. During the 97-second test, onboard autonomous landing and hazard avoidance technology sensors, or ALHAT, surveyed the hazard field for safe landing sites, then guided the lander forward and downward to a successful landing.

[@Development-U]

Wow! If that doesn't excite you I don't know what will! Baklund R&D has been proud to work for NASA and we are very excited to see this success!

[@autopsynaz]

Awesome! More 60fps videos please!! Well done NASA!!

[@peachtrees27]

Nicely done guys. Don't lose your edge - hope a real mission is in the pipeline!

[@JaredMSpool]

Congratulations on an excellent flight! Very exciting!

[@ChemicalBurn1985]

Beautiful flight and amazing landing! Great job guys!

[@SynytsiaAnton]

Congrats NASA Morpheus team.

[@mrshazelrajkumar4728]

Beautiful stuff and l hope there is a great mission ahead. Well done guys.

[@ViperEye]

Beautiful & stable flight!

[@MrLewooz]

Remembering the tethered flights and the crash progress and work has been made and loads of it! All the test went smoothly .....all of 'em...

[@1701511ta]

Sweet, single stage to orbit

[@johnvargo8050]

I'll take mine in blue, please. Nice work.

[@BenEtherington]

They come in any color you like as long as it's silver.

[@SlipKnotRicky]

Seems comparable to the Dragon II lander by SpaceX. What kind of rocket engine is that? It looks like some kind of Pulse Rocket....... Great Video!

[@BenEtherington]

That's definitely not a pulsed rocket engine. There's no way to get this level of throttle control out of solid rockets, pulsed or not. It's actually a MethaLox engine. Interestingly enough, the RCS pulls propellant from the main tanks as well, it's quite tidy. Project Morpheus is fairly similar to Dragon II, but much, much simpler. It's intended as a technology testbed (more like SPX's Dragonfly or Grasshopper), and we hope to send it to the Moon one day.

[@SlipKnotRicky]

Ben Etherington Thanks Ben

[@davidvarenkamp5884]

SlipKnotRicky

[@GeenBeschrijving]

Who can tell me what this machine is going to do on what place?

[@BenEtherington]

Right now, it's going to continue testing VTOL technology right here on Earth. We hope to one day send it to the Moon, too. Right now, though, we're learning a lot about hazard avoidance and automated landing protocol.

[@sanforce]

This specific project is just a technology test-bed. Lessons learned will be incorporated into future VTOL missions.

[@Chronokinetic]

Land on the Moon AND/OR Mars. That's the beauty of it. The obstacles and craters in Moon and Mars are similar so this can land a payload after it's dropped past orbit, find an unobstructed place, and land.

[@vipsrocket]

nice armadillo

[@TheApocalypseLive]

That's cute.

[@mrbreaker101]

Why don't you Americans decide to use either Imperial or Metric measurements, and stick with it? I personally think Metric is a lot simpler, and the small difficulty in getting people to adjust to it is outweighed by the benefit of using it as an interchangeable, global standard... ... but it seems you use both. In the description, it soars to "800 feet" but in the voiceover, "200 metres" Argh! Coming from a generation that was taught Metric in British schools but influenced by parents who only understand Imperial, I look forward to the day there's no longer any confusion over pound, kilograms, feet, inches, centimetres and metres. And I really have no idea what a yard or a furlong is.

[@johnvargo8050]

This shouldn't need explaining, but.... The scientific community generally uses the metric system. This video is intended for non-scientific Americans, of which you are not. This is a pretty small thing to get so worked up about.

[@sanforce]

NASA does use metric measurements for all flight systems. They used to use both systems of measurement, until a probe crashed on Mars due to a mix-up in units. They usually just convert it to imperial for media reasons, because that's what Americans are used to seeing.

[@socratesthecabdriver]

WHY DONT YOU AMERICANS ????

[@jevchance]

socratesthecabdriver Because America

[@bwaaderant21]

What the hell do we want with the metric system? Look where the Imperial system has gotten us! The metric world is still trying to catch up.

[@FreemanYellow]

Путиноиды из Роскосмоса отдыхают.