| Morpheus lander crashes, burns and explodes in untethered flight test, NASA remains optimistic (video) Aug 10th 2012, 11:03  As noisy as we found Project Morpheus' tethered flight test, its untethered follow-up was far, far louder. Yesterday, the experimental lander suffered a hardware component failure, which NASA says "prevented it from maintaining stable flight." This caused it to crash into the ground and well, explode. On the upside, the space agency says that these kinds of failures were anticipated, stating that they are a normal part of the development process and will be used to build better systems moving forward. You didn't think Curiosity made its touchdown on Mars without learning from a few mistakes, did you? Click onwards to check out the test -- and its aftermath -- in 5, 4, 3, 2, er... Continue reading Morpheus lander crashes, burns and explodes in untethered flight test, NASA remains optimistic (video) Filed under: Transportation, Science Morpheus lander crashes, burns and explodes in untethered flight test, NASA remains optimistic (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Aug 2012 07:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | NASA, YouTube (toastforbrekkie) | Email this | Comments | | Researchers create Meshworm robot, beat it up (video) Aug 10th 2012, 10:25  We've seen a number of options for controlling real worms, but never a worm robot, until now. Enter Meshworm, the latest creation from researchers at MIT, Harvard University and Seoul National University. The bot is made from "artificial muscle" composed of a flexible mesh tube segmented by loops of nickel / titanium wire. The wire contracts and squeezes the tube when heated by a flowing current, but cut the power and it returns to its original shape, creating propulsion in a similar way to its living kin. Taking traditional moving parts out of the equation also makes it pretty hardy, as proven by extensive testing (read: hitting it with a hammer). DARPA is known for getting its fingers in all sorts of strange pies, and it also supported this project. We can't see it being the fastest way of gathering intel, but the potential medical applications, such as next-gen endoscopes, sound plausible enough. Full impact tests in the video after the break. Continue reading Researchers create Meshworm robot, beat it up (video) Filed under: Robots, Science Researchers create Meshworm robot, beat it up (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Aug 2012 06:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink BBC | MIT news | Email this | Comments | |