A privately built rocket reached its highest altitude and traveled its longest distance to date in a demonstration last week for NASA officials at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, Calif., according to a news release.

In development for about two years, the Xombie suborbital rocket built by Masten Space Systems was airborn for some 80 seconds during the test flight, according to spaceref.com. The rocket was controlled by Charles Stark Draper Laboratory's Guidance Embedded Navigator Integregration Environment (GENIE) developed under NASA's Flight Opportunities Program.

The test's success will allow NASA to test prototype landing systems for future space missions, the report said.

"Two hundred meters above the Martian or lunar surface is not the place you want to be using an innovative new sensor or landing algorithm for the first time," said Christopher Baker of the Flight Opportunities Program at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in the SpaceRef release.

Masten was awarded a two-year contract to fly research and technology payloads to suborbital space by the Flight Opportunities program, according to space.com. The program has awarded some $10 million to six other companies to do the same thing.

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