NASA’s Johnson Space Center’s (JSC) Mission Control in Houston, TX, takes control of a mission as soon as a spacecraft is launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But Houston, also known as Space City, has not fired a rocket engine, let alone tested a new rocket-powered vehicle, in years—until now
The Morpheus Lander is a NASA designed vertical ascent/descent spacecraft, with a new green propellant propulsion system, manufactured at Armadillo Aerospace and at NASA JSC in Houston.
The size of the liquid methane (natural gas) and liquid oxygen clean burning Morpheus testbed is representative of a full scale lunar lander type vehicle, which, once lifted to trans lunar injection, is capable of landing Robonaut, a dexterous humanoid robot built and designed by NASA, or another 1,100 pound payload down to and back from the surface of the moon.
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