The knowledge and insight we gained over the 27 test firings of the previous vehicle are fully incorporated into the testing we’re beginning now. Although a hardware failure led to the loss of the original vehicle last August, the failure and our internal investigation gave us valuable insight into areas that needed improvement. The vehicle may look largely the same as the previous version, but there are numerous changes that have been incorporated. We have now implemented 70 different upgrades to the vehicle and ground systems to both address potential contributors to the test failure, and also to improve operability and maintainability.
And So We Begin Again
The roar of a 5,000lb rocket engine has returned to the Johnson Space Center. The Morpheus team has completed the build-up of our “Bravo” vehicle, conducted numerous integrated tests, and has now stepped into our flight test program. We are picking up where we left off – in fact we never stopped working. We have completed our first major milestone in conducting a 50-second static hot fire of the main engine in the vehicle, including simultaneous demonstration of thrust vector control (TVC) and integrated methane reaction control system (RCS) jet firings. Thrust vector control is used to balance and fly the vehicle, while the RCS jets are used to keep the vehicle pointed in the correct direction. We will step into dynamic tethered flights soon, in preparation for our return to KSC this summer.
The knowledge and insight we gained over the 27 test firings of the previous vehicle are fully incorporated into the testing we’re beginning now. Although a hardware failure led to the loss of the original vehicle last August, the failure and our internal investigation gave us valuable insight into areas that needed improvement. The vehicle may look largely the same as the previous version, but there are numerous changes that have been incorporated. We have now implemented 70 different upgrades to the vehicle and ground systems to both address potential contributors to the test failure, and also to improve operability and maintainability.
The knowledge and insight we gained over the 27 test firings of the previous vehicle are fully incorporated into the testing we’re beginning now. Although a hardware failure led to the loss of the original vehicle last August, the failure and our internal investigation gave us valuable insight into areas that needed improvement. The vehicle may look largely the same as the previous version, but there are numerous changes that have been incorporated. We have now implemented 70 different upgrades to the vehicle and ground systems to both address potential contributors to the test failure, and also to improve operability and maintainability.
Hard at Work
The Morpheus team has been hard at work preparing for this year’s series of tests and building the new Morpheus 1.5B and 1.5C vehicles. We have been busy assembling the vehicle structures, wiring in all of our sensors, running integrated tests, continuing engine firings at Stennis Space Center, and more.
The Morpheus and ALHAT teams are now a combined team, which enables a more integrated series of tests as we prepare for future flight tests. One of these integrated tests took place at Kennedy Space Center in December. We used a Langley Research Center Huey helicopter as a stand-in for Morpheus. We mounted the ALHAT sensors under the belly of the helicopter pointed in the direction of the helicopter motion. Other components such as sensor electronics, Morpheus flight computer, real-time communications equipment and support hardware were placed in the passenger/cargo area. This allowed both onboard and ground support teams to monitor progress in real-time. The helicopter was flown repeatedly on Morpheus-type trajectories towards the hazard field.
Hard at Work
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| Langley Helicopter with ALHAT sensors attached running simulated Morpheus flights at KSC. Image Credit: NASA |
Moving Forward, Not Starting Over
"A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."
-John Augustus Shedd
On Thursday we made our second free flight attempt with the Morpheus prototype vehicle. As you can see in the video below, shortly after liftoff we experienced a hardware failure and lost the vehicle. The root cause is still under investigation, but what we do know is that at the start of ascent we lost data from the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) that supplies navigation updates to the flight computer. Without this measurement the vehicle is blind and does not know which way it is pointing or accelerating. Since this data is needed to maintain stable flight, the vehicle could not determine which way was up and began to tumble and impacted the ground about 50 feet from the launch site. No one was injured, no property was damaged besides the vehicle and we have been able to recover significant data, which will give us greater insight into the source of the problem.We have said it before and will continue to say, this is why we test. We have already learned a lot from this test and will continue to learn as we recover data and evaluate the hardware. No test article should be too precious to lose. A spare vehicle was planned from the start and is just a few months away from completion. The basic development approach is to quickly build, test and redesign the hardware to achieve many design cycles and maturity before building flight articles.
Tether Test 20: First KSC Flight
The Morpheus team successfully flew our first tether test at Kennedy Space Center on Friday August 3rd. The objectives for this flight, along with the dry and wet runs earlier in the week, were to verify all systems were in good working order after shipping from Johnson Space Center in July and to allow the new KSC support team an opportunity to move through flight procedures.
After looking over the data over the weekend and coming together for a Test Readiness Review, our Project Manager, Jon Olansen, approved our first ever free flight for August 7th. This will be the first time we will fly the vehicle without a crane attached. The crane was used in previous tests as a safety mechanism to allow each subsystem to safely tune their individual systems for a smooth stable flight.
After looking over the data over the weekend and coming together for a Test Readiness Review, our Project Manager, Jon Olansen, approved our first ever free flight for August 7th. This will be the first time we will fly the vehicle without a crane attached. The crane was used in previous tests as a safety mechanism to allow each subsystem to safely tune their individual systems for a smooth stable flight.
Testing Begins at KSC
NASA's Project Morpheus lander is moving one step closer to achieving autonomous flight and landing. After undergoing testing at Johnson Space Center in Houston for nearly a year, Morpheus arrived at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 27 to begin about three months of tests.
Dr. Jon Olansen is the Morpheus project manager at Johnson. He said a small, dedicated team in Houston completed substantial work to design, develop, integrate and test the Morpheus prototype lander.
"We completed the fundamental testing needed to characterize vehicle performance while tethered at JSC," Olansen said. "Now it's time to move on to the next phase of the project where we fly the vehicle autonomously in free flight."
Olansen said the testing at Kennedy will continually expand the flight envelope until they can fully simulate the final approach and landing phases of a planetary surface entry.
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| Morpheus and the new hazard field at KSC |
Dr. Jon Olansen is the Morpheus project manager at Johnson. He said a small, dedicated team in Houston completed substantial work to design, develop, integrate and test the Morpheus prototype lander.
"We completed the fundamental testing needed to characterize vehicle performance while tethered at JSC," Olansen said. "Now it's time to move on to the next phase of the project where we fly the vehicle autonomously in free flight."
Olansen said the testing at Kennedy will continually expand the flight envelope until they can fully simulate the final approach and landing phases of a planetary surface entry.
Blazing a New Trail
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| Dolores Petropulos |
In which NASA student opportunity project did you participate, and how did you get involved in it?
I was offered a USRP internship by NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. I applied on SOLAR (Student Online Application for Recruiting Interns, Fellows and Scholars).
Explain the research you conducted through your NASA involvement and why this topic is important.
I developed, tested and used simulation software for Project Morpheus, the second prototype (version 1.5) of an autonomous rocket/moon lander. In classical mythology, Morpheus is a god of dreams. He appeared in the dreams of mortals and had the ability to take any male human form. In the NASA Johnson Space Center research project Morpheus, the next moon lander/rocket is designed for autonomous flight or many different types of flight. It is portable and could be used to send a robotic or manned mission to a distant planet. Morpheus has an onboard navigation and guidance system and a precision landing and hazard avoidance system (ALHAT). These systems will allow Morpheus to fly autonomously, or with limited interaction from mission control. The ALHAT project stands for Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology and involves active sensors for terrain-relative navigation and hazard avoidance. Morpheus' propulsion system consists of an oxygen/methane fuel-type system, which also can be derived from space and terrestrial atmospheres, providing potential in situ resource use opportunities. My work on this project involved developing, testing and using simulation and flight software. In particular, I have been incorporating portions of the capabilities of the Autonomous Flight Manager into the NASA Goddard Core Flight Software, which was obtained at the beginning of the Morpheus project. Reuse of the proven Core Flight Software with new software components specific to Morpheus is an experiment in affordable extensibility of a vehicle's capability. The software components specifically involved in my project are the Autonomous Flight Manager, the Sequencer and the Limit Checker.
Mindi Capp/NASA Educational Technology Services
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Engineers in Training
Sometimes I think that taking the exploration work we do to the public is as important for us as it is for them.
We'd cordoned off three sides of Morpheus at Space Center today to prevent unauthorized pinching, patting, or souvenir sampling of the lander. However, Tom Campbell, the Morpheus GNC hardware engineer, had the great idea to take kids that showed interest onesy-twosey down on the ground to look under the lander and see the rocket motor. The effect was striking. You could see the light in the kids' eyes after they got up from the baking concrete. They'd just seen a rocket engine that changes the temperature of its propellant almost 3000 degrees F in less than a foot and a half of travel.
Tom's words after one kid got up and walked away chatting to his parents:
"We just made another engineer."
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| Explorer |
Tom's words after one kid got up and walked away chatting to his parents:
"We just made another engineer."
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