Morpheus planetary lander has an explosive nightmare

Kelly Oakes, contributor

(Image: NASA)

For a spacecraft named after the god of dreams, the day turned into a nightmare.

NASA's Morpheus planetary lander was lovingly prepared at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida for its first untethered test flight on 9 August - and then it crashed and burned. The video below captures the moment the lander rises into the air before turning around and headbutting the ground.

Morpheus is being considered for a future trip to the moon or an asteroid. It was being tested in a specially created hazard field designed to mimic the surface of the moon with boulders, rocks, slopes and craters.

The craft had spent the first year of its life at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas. Thursday's epic fail came after a cautious tethered test flight, during which Morpheus was attached to a crane.

After blasting off using its methane and liquid oxygen-fuelled engines, the lander experienced a "hardware component failure" that prevented it from maintaining stable flight, said NASA.

Nobody was injured during the crash. But Morpheus itself looks more than a little worse for wear by the end of this video.