Mighty Eagle Prototype Lander Flies Over NASA Marshall

Posted
by
Doug Messier
on August 15, 2012, at 5:46 am
in News
. Tags: , , .
Comments: 6 responses
6 Comments

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (NASA PR) — The “Mighty Eagle,” a NASA robotic prototype lander, is soaring high again for a series of tests being conducted at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

Since its last round of tests in 2011, the Mighty Eagle team has made significant updates to the guidance controls on the lander’s camera, furthering its autonomous capabilities. The three-legged “green” lander is fueled by 90 percent pure hydrogen peroxide and receives its commands from an onboard computer that activates its onboard thrusters to carry it to a controlled landing using a pre-programmed flight profile. It is 4 feet tall and 8 feet in diameter and, when fueled, weighs 700 pounds.

In this series of tests, which will continue through September, the lander prototype will autonomously fly and hover at 30 feet for two tests, and up to 100 feet for another two tests, and then move sideways, to safely land 30 feet away from the launch pad. The test demonstrates what it will take to perform the final descent of an autonomous controlled landing on the moon, asteroids or other airless bodies.

“These lander tests provide the data necessary to expand our capabilities to go to other destinations,” said Dr. Greg Chavers, engineering manager and warm gas test article lead at the Marshall Center. “It also furthers our knowledge of the engineering components needed for future human and robotic missions.” NASA will use the Mighty Eagle to mature the technology needed to develop a new generation of small, smart, versatile robotic landers capable of achieving scientific and exploration goals throughout the solar system.

Watch the video of the Mighty Eagle flight on Aug. 8, at the Marshall Center:

The Mighty Eagle prototype lander was developed by the Marshall Center and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., for NASA’s Planetary Sciences Division, Headquarters Science Mission Directorate. Key partners in this project include the Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation, which includes the Science Applications International Corporation, Dynetics Corp. and Teledyne Brown Engineering Inc., all of Huntsville.

For more information on NASA’s robotic landers, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/lunarquest/robotic/index.html

Be Sociable, Share!

Permalink

Post Comment

  • ReusablesForever

    Interesting that Marshall released this video less than a week after a more or less equivalent from JSC crashed on its first free flight.

  • Andy

    Who is championing the use of “green” when describing propellants? And what makes a propellant “green”? I saw the same term used to describe methane and LOX in article about Morpheus.

  • reader

    @ReusablesForever – Morpheus and Mighty Eeagle are vastly different, with very different goals as well. Complementary, not competitive projects.

    @Andy – In the world of rocketry, “green” is anything that is not hydrazine or RFNA :) But actually, hydrogen peroxide is just relatively easy and cheap monoprop to work with for low performance platforms, and fits WGTA project goals well enough.

  • ReusablesForever

    @reader – I tend to see Morpheus, Mighty Eagle, and even Masten’s vehicles in the same light: things that go up and down. The most significant thing that they seem to be doing is developing guidance and control systems for future lunar (or elsewhere) landings and exploratory hops around the landing vicinity. What am I missing?

  • Paul451

    ReusablesForever,
    From what I’ve read, Morpheus has three main goals, one is to develop a methane rocket (useful technology for Mars-Return missions, since methane can be generated on Mars), the second is a sensor package and guidance system that autonomously scans the landing area (again, handy for Mars.) Lastly, it’s meant to serve as a general low-cost training tool. And frankly, NASA does too few built-it-break-it-fix-it exercises for their engineers.

  • ReusablesForever

    Paul451
    Thanks – I missed the methane connection. We learn from our mistakes so we need to be allowed to make them. Look at all the vehicles and missions that were lost during the early days of the launch vehicle business (remember Corona/Discoverer? success only came with the 13th launch) – that wouldn’t be acceptable in today’s environment, but we eventually learned how to make them go.