UPDATE: As I post this, NASA’s Curiosity has landed on Mars!

NASA has developed a new family of space probes to explore our solar system.

Project Morpheus is a testbed for technology that will one day be used to land spacecraft on the Moon, Mars or asteroids.
The lander, called Morpheus, is being used to demonstrate new green propellant propulsion systems and autonomous landing and hazard detection technology.

The lander has been designed in-house by NASA and built at NASA's Johnson Space Center and Armadillo Aerospace.

The primary focus of Morpheus is to demonstrate an integrated propulsion and guidance, navigation and control system that can fly a lunar descent profile to exercise the Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT) safe landing sensors and closed-loop flight control.

Morpheus' technologies are being developed to create a spacecraft that can land on the Moon, Mars or other planetary surface.

It has been undergoing tests of its rocket systems at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and it is undergoing flight tests at the Space Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

 

What is quite interesting about Morpheus is that it uses LOx and methane as propellant fuel. This smart foresight is what we have always expected from NASA: these fuels can be easily produced locally (LOL) on other planets and their satellites. For example, moon dust can supply oxygen, and methane is quite abundant on Earth and Mars.

Even better than that, “Morpheus is designed for both autonomous, and different types of flight. It is portable, and can be used to send manned or robotic missions to distant planets” says Delores Petrolupos, a Morpheus programmer.

Sen.com has a very good write up on this here.

SMB & Midmarket Value: HUGE opportunity. This project is by NASA and Armadillo Aerospace, found by ID Software honcho, John Carmack. It is not by the usual suspects. This tells me that SMMBs* have a role to play, and should investigate their participation.

Looks like we are finally going places.

*SMMB: Small, Medium, & Midmarket Businesses. An acronym I just invented.