Landing in the Dark: NASA Showcases Morpheus Prototype [VIDEO]

NASA ran successful free-flight and landing tests of the Morpheus prototype lander last night, showing that the new Hazard Detection System can enable automated systems to land wherever they want.

"Once this technology goes into service, the days of having to land 20 or 30 miles (32 to 48 km) from where you really want to land for fear of the hazardous craters and rocks will be over," engineer Erick Roback said in a NASA statement. "Then we can land near the truly interesting science and near the critical resources that will be needed for eventual colonization, and we can do it over and over again safely."

The Hazard Detection System (HDS) reportedly guided the Morpheus' automated landing protocol in the middle of the night with the assistance of three light detection and ranging sensors - which locate obstacles and craters long before they can be a problem - landing the craft in a simulated "lunar hazard field" not far from the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

According to NASA, this technology was designed to make automated cargo delivery to potentially hazardous planetary surfaces easier and safer for expensive landers like the experimental Morpheus, which is capable of carrying 1,100 pounds of cargo.

Morpheus is unique as a planetary lander in that it's capable of both vertical takeoff and landing - making it ideal as a "vertical testbed" (VTB) for the testing of other spacecraft technologies, according to the Morpheus team.

This is also what made Morpheus ideal for testing the Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT) showcased last night.

The testing in question went off without a hitch, Roback, who leads the ALHAT flash lidar project, reported.

"The team has been striving for almost eight years to reach this point of testing the ALHAT system in a relevant space-flight-like environment on Morpheus," he said. " "With this sensor we could even find the safest landing site in a pitch black crater."

Currently, NASA is not making any planetary cargo drops. However, with the Russian space program and private firms like SpaceX filling the International Space Station cargo and taxi service gap, which was left in the wake of the NASA shuttle program, the US agency has set its sights on the distant future.