Project Morpheus

Project Morpheus was NASA’s spacecraft-technology development and test effort for an oxygen/methane vertical-takeoff and vertical-landing testbed. Beginning in 2010, the Johnson-led team built and tested successive prototypes, propulsion and flight-software systems, and integrated Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology. Work included hot-fire, tethered and free-flight campaigns at Johnson and Kennedy. The programme’s final Kennedy demonstration in December 2014 met its precision-landing and integrated-propulsion objectives; the flight hardware and sensor systems then returned to their NASA centres for further research.