For a few moments today, NASA forgot about the successful landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars, and focused on the Morpheus lander, which unfortunately caught fire and crashed this morning.

In a tweet, NASA's Kennedy Space Center announced that the prototype experienced a failure during its first free-flight test today, but no one was hurt in the explosion.

The unmanned experimental and "green" device barely left the launch pad around 12:40 p.m. today before experiencing a hardware component failure, and crashing back to the ground, according to NASA officials.

Engineers are looking into the test data, the space center said in a statement, which explained that "failures such as these" were anticipated and are actually part of the development process.

"What we learn from these tests will help us build the best possible system in the future," NASA said.

According to the agency's official Project Morpheus website, the spacecraft is a vertical test bed vehicle that demonstrates a new green propellant propulsion system, as well as autonomous landing and hazard-detection technology.

"The Morpheus Project represents not only a vehicle to advance technologies, but also an opportunity to try out 'lean development' engineering practices," the site said.

Manufactured and assembled at NASA's Johnson Space Center, the Morpheus can carry 1,100 pounds of cargo to the moon, perhaps transporting a humanoid robot, a small rover, or a small laboratory to convert moon dust into oxygen.

In advance of today's test flight, the liquid-oxygen and methane-propelled lander had been tested in a series of tether flights, contributing to the project's overall reported cost of about $7 million in the last two and a half years, according to Space.com.

Previously, the SUV-sized Morpheus sparked a grass fire at the Johnson Space Center in Houston during a 2011 tethered test flight, Space.com reported. No one was hurt.

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NASA Morpheus Lander Crashes During Test Flight

A prototype NASA lander crashed and burned in a test flight at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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NASA test planetary lander burns and crashes

MIAMI (Reuters) - NASA'S Project Morpheus lander, an experimental vehicle designed with a view toward future U.S. space missions beyond Earth's orbit, crashed and burst into flames at the Kennedy Space Center in central Florida on Thursday. During a so-called autonomous free-flight test, NASA said the vehicle lifted off the ground successfully but "then experienced a hardware component failure ...

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NASA's Morpheus lander in fiery crash at Cape Canaveral

Earlier this week NASA safely landed a robotic rover on Mars about 150 million miles away. But on Thursday here on Earth, a test model planetary lander crashed and burned at Kennedy Space Center in Florida just seconds after liftoff.

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NASA's 'green' planetary test lander crashes

NASA released new images of Mars from its Curiosity rover Wednesday, and fixed problems with an onboard antenna.

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NASA releases new Curiosity rover images from Mars

(CBS News) Fifty years after the space age began, budget cuts have significantly hurt America's space program. But NASA officials say they're still doing groundbreaking work, like this week's Mars landing.

Latest Curiosity images show rover's mission on Mars

For many fans of the space program the final launch of the shuttle, and the piggy-back journey to a museum, was cause for deep disappointment. But for NASA administrator Charles Bolden, it was the dawn of a new NASA. Bolden has said, "It allows us to move on to exploration, to what everybody expects of NASA."

This week came a giant step in that direction as the car-sized rover named Curiosity made a dramatic landing on Mars and NASA scientists exploded in joy and relief.

Bolden says it's all part of the transition from the old NASA to NASA 2.0. Bolden said, "I would say NASA 2.0, the new NASA, is the old NASA willing to accept new ideas."

But in recent years, NASA has not just been about new ideas about exploration - but new ways to keep Americans focused on space. For the landing of Curiosity, NASA used every trick in the high-tech communications book: Millions went on-line to watch NASA's special-effects video of the landing, called "7 Minutes of Terror," starring a giant parachute and a rocket-propelled landing platform. They're using every kind of social media. The rover even has its own Twitter account with nearly a million followers. And it will be sending back a steady stream of color photos, including some already released of the craft during its descent.

NASA even seems pleased that a scientist known as "Mohawk Guy" has become an internet sensation.

Bolden told CBS News, "It's definitely NASA for the new generation."

CBS News space analyst Bill Harwood said it's no surprise that people are fascinated with the Mars rover. "They're landing on another world. It's exciting," he said. "What are they gonna see? What are they gonna find? Was there ever life ever on Mars?"

But he says due to tight budgets NASA already had to withdraw from two other Mars missions with the European Space Agency.

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NASA looks to keep American eyes on space

Bobak Ferdowski, the mission controller for NASA's Curiosity rover, became an overnight superstar thanks to his punk-rock hairdo and anti-corporate vibe

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Who is NASA's 'Mohawk Guy'?

NASA rover Curiosity's second day on Mars went "flawlessly," NASA said, confirming the antennas, communication links and generator on the $2.5 billion robot are all working well.

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Curiosity's second day on Mars 'flawless': NASA

PASADENA, Calif. NASA's latest adventure to Mars has given the world more than just glimpses of a new alien landscape.

It opened a window into the trip itself, from video footage of the landing to a photo of the rover hanging by a parachute to a shot of discarded spacecraft hardware strewn across the surface. And the best views -- of Mars and the journey there -- are yet to come.

"Spectacular," mission deputy project scientist Joy Crisp said of the footage. "We've not had that before."

Since parking itself inside an ancient crater Sunday night, the Curiosity rover has delighted scientists with views of its new surroundings, including the 3-mile-high mountain it will drive to. It beamed back the first color picture Tuesday revealing a tan-hued, pebbly landscape and the crater rim off in the distance.

Locale aside, Curiosity is giving scientists an unprecedented sense of what it took to reach its Martian destination. The roving laboratory sent back nearly 300 thumbnails that NASA processed into a low-quality video showing the last 2 1/2 minutes of its white-knuckle dive through the thin Martian atmosphere.

In the video, the protective heat shield pops off and tumbles away. The footage gets jumpy as Curiosity rides on a parachute. In the last scene, dust billows up just before landing.

NASA twice tried to record a Mars landing. In 1999, the Mars Polar Lander carried similar gear, but it slammed into the south pole after prematurely shutting off its engines. Another effort was aborted in 2008 during the Phoenix lander's mission to the northern plains when mission managers decided not to turn it on for fear it would interfere with the landing.

"It's too emotional for me," said Ken Edgett of the Malin Space Science Systems, which operates the video camera. "It's been a long journey and it's really awesome."

The full high-resolution video will be downloaded when time allows and should give the first peek of a landing on another planet.

Curiosity's journey to Mars spanned eight months and 352 million miles. The rover gently touched down Sunday night after executing an elaborate and untested landing routine. The size of a compact car, it was too heavy to land using air bags. Instead, it relied on a heat shield, parachute, rockets and cables to lower it to the ground.

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NASA mission gives a peek of rover's journey to Mars

06-08-2012 01:09 This is a screen capture of the 6 minutes before and after the NASA MSL Curiosity rover landed on Mars. The entire mission control room bursts into cheers around time 5:30 upon confirmation of landing and the first images from Mars arrive around time 7:30. Alongside the NASA TV stream, I'm running the Eyes on the Solar System computer simulation which was using live telemetry data from the spacecraft to show what was happening in near real-time. All of this was captured on my laptop in Australia using the ScreenFlow app, streaming the event over the 3G connection from my iPhone. See more updates and images from NASA's MSL homepage: In 1970, a NASA scientist wrote to a nun working with starving kids in Africa and defended costly space exploration. If you think spending money on space is a waste, read this: If you see a derogatory comment below, please vote it down so that it gets removed.

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NASA TV Capture of MSL Curiosity Rover Landing on Mars - Video

PASADENA, Calif. NASA celebrated the precision landing of a rover on Mars and marveled over the mission's first photographs Monday grainy, black-and-white images of Martian gravel, a mountain at sunset and, most exciting of all, the spacecraft's white-knuckle plunge through the red planet's atmosphere.

Curiosity, a roving laboratory the size of a compact car, landed right on target late Sunday night after an eight-month, 352-million-mile journey.

Cheers and applause echoed through NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and engineers hugged, high-fived and thrust their fists in the air after signals from space indicated the vehicle had survived the harrowing descent through Mars' pinkish atmosphere.

JPL Director Charles Elachi likened the team to Olympic athletes: "This team came back with the gold."

"Everybody in the morning should be sticking their chests out and saying, 'That's my rover on Mars,'" NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said on NASA TV.

Extraordinary efforts were needed for the landing because the rover weighs one ton, and the thin Martian atmosphere offers little friction to slow a spacecraft down. Curiosity had to go from 13,000 mph to zero in seven minutes, unfurling a parachute, then firing rockets to brake. In a Hollywood-style finish, cables delicately lowered it to the ground at 2 mph.

At the end of what NASA called "seven minutes of terror," the vehicle settled into place almost perfectly flat in the crater it was aiming for.

"We have ended one phase of the mission much to our enjoyment," mission manager Mike Watkins said. "But another part has just begun."

The nuclear-powered Curiosity will dig into the Martian surface to analyze what's there and hunt for some of the molecular building blocks of life, including carbon.

It won't start moving for a couple of weeks, because all the systems on the $2.5 billion rover have to be checked out. Color photos, panoramas and video will start coming in the next few days.

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NASA cheers new photos from Mars

07-08-2012 14:52

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NASA's Curiosity Sol 2 Update - Video

NASA's latest adventure to Mars has given the world more than just glimpses of a new alien landscape.

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NASA mission provides peek of the journey to Mars

NASA's latest adventure to Mars has given the world more than just glimpses of a new alien landscape.

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NASA mission gives a peek of rover's Mars journey

About 36 hours after NASA landed its $2.5 billion rover on Mars, it released what it jokingly dubbed a "crime scene" aerial shot of where the parachute, heat shield and vehicle came down.

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NASA shows first 'crime scene' photo of Mars landing

NASA's engineers have shown the world yet again their capacity to be great.

Their plan to deliver the 1-ton rover Curiosity to the surface of Mars was bold, audacious, unprecedented - and, early on Monday, successful.

It garnered well-deserved kudos from all around, including the top: "It proves that even the longest of odds are no match for our unique blend of ingenuity and determination," President Barack Obama said.

While it's clear NASA can still do great things, what's less clear is how much greatness the agency has left.

On Friday the space agency took a big step toward ceding low-Earth orbit to commercial spaceflight companies, providing $1.1 billion to SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada to develop spacecraft to fly humans into space. This was widely viewed as an important step in bringing NASA out of its post-shuttle hangover, during which it has had to rely on Russian transport to and from its International Space Station.

What's next?

Yet after Curiosity's success, NASA itself has few major events planned - its new Orion spacecraft could launch an unmanned test flight in 2014, but it will fly on a commercial rocket. And even if NASA's own larger rocket, now on the drawing board, survives a decade of political change, it won't fly until at least 2021.

"It's always a good thing when NASA pulls off an incredibly complex and difficult challenge," said Jim Muncy, a space consultant who runs PoliSpace. But, he noted, there's not many major, attention-grabbing missions coming for awhile, during which time it may be difficult to maintain broad political support for the agency.

The need to find funding in NASA's budget for the James Webb Space Telescope, the cost of which has risen from $1.6 billion a decade ago to $8.7 billion, has caused NASA to delay or cancel other interesting projects.

"The problem is that the James Webb Space Telescope costs so much that we're not going back to Mars anytime soon," he said. "NASA's big programs tend to eat their young."

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Can NASA keep public's curiosity piqued?

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has snapped its first color photo of the Martian landscape using a camera that is still packed away on its long robotic arm.

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NASA Mars Rover Snaps Its 1st Color Photo on Red Planet

NASA's Curiosity rover has transmitted its first color photo and a low-resolution video showing the last 2 1/2 minutes of its white-knuckle dive through the Martian atmosphere, giving earthlings a sneak peek of a spacecraft landing on another world.

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NASA Curiosity rover sends back 1st color picture

NASA's Curiosity rover has beamed back its first color photo from the ancient crater where it landed on Mars and a video showing the last 2 1/2 minutes of its white-knuckle dive through the Martian atmosphere, a sneak peek of a spacecraft landing on another world.

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NASA's new rover sends back 1st color image, video

06-08-2012 01:46 NASA's most advanced Mars rover Curiosity has landed on the Red Planet. The one-ton rover, hanging by ropes from a rocket backpack, touched down onto Mars Sunday to end a 36-week flight and begin a two-year investigation. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft that carried Curiosity succeeded in every step of the most complex landing ever attempted on Mars, including the final severing of the bridle cords and flyaway maneuver of the rocket backpack.

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NASA Lands Car-Size Rover Beside Martian Mountain - Video