HUNTSVILLE, Ala. While Curiosity is busy exploring the surface of Mars, NASA's "Mighty Eagle" rover is blazing the way for future missions.

Holding their breath with anticipation, engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center watched their brain child skyrocket hundreds of feet into the air. Completing this round of flight test objectives, the "Mighty Eagle," a NASA robotic prototype lander, flew to an altitude of 100 feet and descended gently to a controlled landing during a successful free flight Wednesday morning. Guided by state-of-the-art autonomous rendezvous and capture software, the vehicle located an on-the-ground target using its onboard camera and flew to it. Previous tests have followed a preprogrammed flight profile. But today the rover operated "closed loop," meaning the vehicle sought out and found its target completely independently.

"The Mighty Eagle had a great flight, fulfilling the objectives we had for this test -- finding and landing on its target using a closed-loop system, says Greg Chavers, test lead for the project. "Given this is one of our last tests in this series, it is a worthy finale of a lot of peoples hard work - including our young engineers. They did a remarkable job running todays flight."

New for this test, the "Mighty Eagle" project managers turned over the vehicles keys to three young Marshall engineers, Adam Lacock, flight manager; Jake Parton, test conductor; and Logan Kennedy, systems engineer.

Nicknamed the "Mighty Eagle" after one of the characters in the popular "Angry Birds" game, the vehicle is a three-legged prototype that resembles an actual flight lander design. It is 4 feet tall and 8 feet in diameter and, when fueled, weighs 700 pounds. It is a green vehicle, fueled by 90 percent pure hydrogen peroxide, and is guided by an onboard computer that activates the thrusters to power the crafts movements.

"Weve surpassed our expectations and flew the most challenging run to date," saidMike Hannan, a controls engineer in Marshall's Engineering Directorate. "Itwas an overcast, extremely humid day, and we were concerned steam might block the vehicles camera. We didnt see that, and the lander sought and found its target successfully."

"It was an invaluable experience managing todays test, added Lacock. "This is the kind of experience young engineers, like myself, need to learn more about flight mechanics, vehicle hardware and project management. It was a good day for our team."

NASA will use the "Mighty Eagle" to mature the technology needed to develop a new generation of small, smart, versatile robotic landers capable of achieving scientific and exploration goals on the surface of the moon, asteroids or other airless bodies.

The "Mighty Eagle" was developed by the Marshall Center and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., for NASAs Planetary Sciences Division, Headquarters Science Mission Directorate.

Keep up with the vehicle's progress on Twitter by following @NASAMightyEagle

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NASA's "Mighty Eagle" takes flight