NASA Morpheus vertical-takeoff and landing testbed

Morpheus was NASA’s autonomous terrestrial lander testbed for spacecraft propulsion and precision-landing technologies. Repeated hot-fire, tether and free-flight tests exercised oxygen/methane main propulsion, attitude control, reusable flight software and the ALHAT sensor suite. Successive Alpha and Bravo configurations supported development at Johnson and Kennedy; the later vehicle completed its final free flight in December 2014. The testbed simulated planetary landing approaches without travelling to space. Its earlier risk-reduction predecessor was the Armadillo Pixel RR1 oxygen/methane testbed, rather than another Morpheus Alpha or Bravo article.