Flying a test bed for future landers
you give the spacecraft the ability to
control its own descent and landing.
And that’s what we will be attempting
By Lloyd Campbell
It’s May 22, 2014, another bright
sunny day at Kennedy Space Center
in Florida where a shiny four legged
vehicle, dubbed Morpheus, stands in
a special area at the north end of the
Shuttle Landing Facility awaiting the
facility where 78 of the 135 Space
Shuttle missions landed.
At the end of the runway, a special
area for takeoff and another for
in Florida. Its initial target point in the
components, all using lasers as their
altimeter, and a Doppler velocimeter.
All of these instruments are essential
to making a safe autonomous
technology
to
detect
anything
the landing pad, irrespective of the
rocks and everything.
“It goes and does a scan and
place to land is. We know what that
should be. From a test perspective
we can make sure it lands in the right
landing area is not very forgiving as
it has boulders and simulated craters
that the lander will have to avoid in
order to touchdown in a safe landing
spot.
And one more thing, nobody
is at the controls, the Morpheus
Lander is going to attempt to do this
autonomously, or all on its own.
visit with Morpheus Project Manager
Jon Olansen and Morpheus Ops
Lead, Ian Young at the project’s
home at Johnson Space Center in
Morpheus is a reusable, autonomous
lander capable of vertical takeoffs
and landings. It provides a costtechnologies developed in various
NASA laboratories in an integrated
Morpheus is designed, developed,
and tested by a small team at
NASA’s Johnson Space Center. From
accomplished in just eight months.
Other segments of NASA provide their
testing was done at the Stennis
Space Center, the Marshall Space
Flight Center provided assistance
with the lander itself as well engine
development, Goddard Space Flight
software development, and the
Langley Research Center and the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory assisted with
www.RocketSTEM .org
Credit: NASA/Mike Chambers and Chris Chamberland
bigger than the size of a basketball,
under any lighting conditions.
Roback described it as follows, “It’s
Doppler lidar measures the vehicle’s
altitude and velocity, allowing it
to make a precision landing on
the surface. And lastly, the highaltitude laser altimeter provides data
enabling the vehicle to land in the
chosen area.
As Morpheus Project Manager Jon
place, the instruments themselves
be controlling the vehicle and if
everything goes as anticipated, they
will control the vehicle all the way to
the ground and land where it should.
can make the vehicle think for itself,
and autonomously perform these
when we send it to the back side of
the Moon, or near some crater, Mars,
ever it is that we want to send a craft
that you’ll have the capability with
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