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[b]Morpheus suffers crash on first free-flight[/b] After undergoing testing at the Johnson Space Center in Houston for nearly a year, NASA's Project Morpheus lander testbed arrived at the the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 27 to begin what was planned as about three months of tests. Today (Aug. 9), during its first untethered free-flight, the vehicle lifted off the ground and then experienced a hardware failure, preventing it from maintaining stable flight. "Failures such as these were anticipated prior to the test and are part of the development process for any complex spaceflight hardware. What we learn from these tests will help us build the best possible system in the future," NASA said in a statement. No one was injured and the resulting fire was extinguished by KSC fire personnel. Engineers are looking into the incident and NASA will release information as it becomes available. Morpheus is one of 20 small projects in the NASA Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate's Advanced Exploration Systems program. These projects pioneer approaches for rapidly developing prototype systems, demonstrating key new capabilities and validating operational concepts for future human missions beyond Earth orbit.
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