CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - At the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility,
or SLF, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians check out
NASA's Morpheus lander, a vertical test bed vehicle. A rock and
crater-filled planetary scape, has been built so engineers can test the
Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology, or ALHAT, system on
the Project Morpheus lander.
Checkout of the prototype lander has been ongoing at NASA’s Johnson
Space Center in Houston in preparation for its first free flight. The
SLF site will provide the lander with the kind of field necessary for
realistic testing. Project Morpheus is one of 20 small projects
comprising the Advanced Exploration Systems, or AES, program in NASA’s
Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. AES projects
pioneer new approaches for rapidly developing prototype systems,
demonstrating key capabilities and validating operational concepts for
future human missions beyond Earth orbit. For more information on
Project Morpheus, visit
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/exploration/morpheus/index.html
Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett