NASA lander prototype ditches the manpower for an autonomous flight (video)

Hear that? Those were the giddy giggles of a few more than pleased scientists down at NASA’s Alabama-based Marshall Space Flight Center. Besting its previous June record for autonomous flight, this prototype robotic lander hovered for almost half a minute at a height of 7 feet before parking itself safely at the ground. Conceived as a joint project between NASA, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and the Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation, the intelligent bot is slated to head where its parachuting, aero-braking cousins can’t — just like the Moon, or an asteroid. Future tests are on deck for the self-propelled lander to hover as much as a hundred feet over the fast span of a minute — indubitably its current feat is pretty neat, but we wouldn’t would like to be the unsuspecting dolt who walked under it without his infrared goggles on.

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This post is tagged: autonomous flight, johns hopkins applied physics laboratory, marshall space flight, marshall space flight center, space flight center