Space.com is reporting that Armadillo Aerospace's vertical take off, vertical landing craft Pixel tipped over and crashed shortly after take off on its repeat run of Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge yesterday. In all three attempts they were able to fly the 90 second flight to an altitude of 50 meters and over a distance of 100 meters. They were unable to make the return trip. Pixel damage it's landing legs in an earlier flight.

"That makeshift support was disturbed when the rocket’s engines ignited. The vehicle rose up at an angle, causing onboard abort sensors to shut down the propulsion system. Pixel then fell over sharply and hit the ground."

Armadillo Aerospace is the project of Doom creator and Id co-founder John Carmack. He,eight other engineers and an armadillo make up the entire company. Each dedicating one day a week to the project. Amazingly Pixel was the best and only contender for the lunar prize and was built for under $200K.

John Carmack has updated his monthlyish blog and describes the X Prize event. He goes into detail about what went right and wrong with their flight attempts. Great albeit quite a geeky read. I was never one for hero worship, but Carmack comes about as close as it will ever get for me.