Nasa's Project Morpheus lander, an experimental vehicle designed with a view toward future space missions beyond Earth's orbit, has crashed and burst into flames at the Kennedy Space Center in central Florida.

During a so-called autonomous free-flight test, Nasa said the vehicle lifted off the ground successfully but "then experienced a hardware component failure, which prevented it from maintaining stable flight."

No one was injured in the accident, which followed nearly a year of testing on Morpheus at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, however, such was the extent of the damage that there was little left to salvage of the space capsule.

The accident came as the agency's scientists were still hailing their rover Curiosity's landing on Mars as a "miracle of engineering."