It has been a bad day for Armadillo Aerospace. A late afternoon attempt to fly their MOD Lunar Lander vehicle on the first hop of a two-part hop ended in flames.

Using a new engine from the group’s Pixel vessel, Armadillo Aerospace engineers raced to prepare the craft for yet another attempt at Level 1 of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. At countdown’s end, the vehicle ignited, but flames started to engulf the vehicle. That fire seemed to go out, but the vehicle was declared non-operational.

Carmack has reportedly called it quits for the day - so the $2 million in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge reverts to the 2008 X Prize Cup.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Space & Astronomy, Technology, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.