( CNN ) -- An unmanned moon lander under development crashed and blew up during an engine test Thursday afternoon at NASA 's Kennedy Space Center , the space agency reported . There were no injuries in the failed test of the lander , dubbed `` Morpheus . '' The craft had gone through several previous exercises in which it was hung from a crane , but Thursday was to have been its first free flight . Instead , the prototype rose a short distance , rolled over and slammed into the ground . The craft caught fire immediately and exploded about 30 seconds later . `` The vehicle itself is lost , '' Jon Olansen , the Morpheus project manager , told reporters . `` But we are working currently on gathering more data and information to understand what occurred in the test and how we can learn from it and move forward . '' Read more about space and science on CNN 's Light Years blog . Olansen said operators have recovered memory devices from the wreckage and will be pulling the data off of them for clues to the cause of the accident . `` From early indications , it seems to be within our guidance navigation control system , seems to point toward hardware , '' Olansen said . In a written statement , NASA said failure is `` part of the development process for any complex spaceflight hardware , '' and designers will learn from whatever caused Thursday 's crash . The Morpheus lander is designed to carry up to 1,100 pounds of cargo for a future moon mission . Its engines are fueled partly by methane , which the agency says is easier to handle and store than other propellants such as liquid hydrogen or hydrazine . Olansen said the space agency has spent about $ 7 million on the project over two and a half years , and the test lander lost Thursday was `` in the $ 500,000 class . '' Another one is currently under construction at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and may be complete in two to three months . `` We want to make sure that what we learn today gets applied to that next vehicle , '' he said . Opinion : Why I love Mars . CNN 's John Couwels contributed to this report .
NEW : ` ` The vehicle itself is lost , '' program chief says . NEW : We are recovering data from the crashed vehicle . The unmanned Morpheus is designed to carry cargo to the moon . It has failed tests ` ` part of the development . ''