Dream on Morpheus

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[b][color=#0000FF]Morpheus lander during test in May 2011[/color][/b]

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[b][color=#0000FF]In July 2012 the prototype lander was sent to the Kennedy Space Center for free flight testing and the media invited to view the Morpheus Lander. On August 9, 2012, the lander “[i]leaned over,[/i]” crashed, caught fire, and exploded twice during its initial free-flight test at the Kennedy Space Center. The fire was extinguished after the tanks had exploded.[/color][/b]

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<<Project Morpheus developed a vertical take off and landing test bed vehicle. The NASA designed robotic lander can land 500 kg of cargo on the Moon. It was manufactured and assembled at NASA's Johnson Space Center and Armadillo Aerospace's facility near Dallas. The prototype lander is a "spacecraft" that is about 10 feet in diameter, weighs approximately 2,300 pounds and consists of four silver spherical propellant tanks topped by avionics boxes and a web of wires. The project tried out cost and time saving “lean development” engineering practices. Other project activities include appropriate ground operations, flight operations, range safety and the instigation of software development procedures. Landing pads and control centers were constructed. Having spent less than $7 million over 2.5 years, the Morpheus project is considered lean and low-cost for NASA.

The primary focus of the Morpheus vehicle was to demonstrate:

1) the integrated system performance of the autonomous Guidance, Navigation and Control (GN&C) system,
2) terrain hazard avoidance sensors,
3) the coupled of the sensors with the GN&C,
4) the utilization of a quad configuration liquid oxygen and liquid methane propulsion system.

Project Morpheus started in July 2010 and was named after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams.The Morpheus spacecraft was derived from the experimental lander produced by Project M with the assistance of Armadillo Aerospace. Project M (NASA) was a NASA initiative to land a humanoid robot on the lunar surface in 1000 days. Work on some of the landers systems began in 2006, when NASA’s Constellation program planned a human return to the moon. In the same year 2006, Armadillo Aerospace entered the first Pixel into the Lunar Lander Challenge part of NASA's Centennial Challenges.>>

[geckzilla]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

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Secrets of Trick Birthday Candles

<<If you have ever seen trick birthday candles, you know that they work amazingly well!
. When a person blows one out, it simply re-lights itself in a few seconds.

To understand trick birthday candles, it is helpful to first understand normal candles. The key thing about a normal candle that is important to a trick candle is the moment after you blow out the candle. Normally there is a burning ember in the wick that causes a ribbon of paraffin smoke to rise from the wick. That ember is hot enough to vaporize paraffin but it is not hot enough to ignite the paraffin vapor.

The key to a re-lighting candle, therefore, is to add something to the wick that the ember is hot enough to ignite. That way the ember can ignite this substance and the substance can then ignite the paraffin vapor. The most common substance mentioned is magnesium. Magnesium is a metal, but it happens to burn rapidly at an ignition temperature as low as 800º F (430º C) (aluminum and iron both burn as well, but magnesium lights at a lower temperature). Inside the burning wick, the magnesium is shielded from oxygen and cooled by liquid paraffin, but once the flame goes out magnesium dust is ignited by the ember. If you watch the ember you will see tiny flecks of magnesium going off. One of them produces the heat necessary to re-light the paraffin vapor, and the candle flame comes back to life!>>

Dawn Mission Reveals Secrets of Large Asteroid
NASA | JPL-Caltech | Dawn Mission Page | 2012 May 10

<<Data confirm a distinct group of meteorites found on Earth did, as theorized, originate from Vesta. The signatures of pyroxene, an iron- and magnesium-rich mineral, in those meteorites match those of rocks on Vesta's surface. These objects account for about 6 percent of all meteorites seen falling on Earth. This makes [Vesta] one of the largest single sources for Earth's meteorites. The finding also marks the first time a spacecraft has been able to visit the source of samples after they were identified on Earth.>>