2024-03-13 01:01:33
The Stratolaunch company has successfully conducted a test of a hypersonic aircraft. TA-1 achieved incredible speed.
Technological progress enables us humans to develop new and increasingly spectacular things. This also applies to aerospace. This year alone, two space missions have already been launched by private companies. One of them successfully landed on the moon.
And now another company has completed a successful test. This is Stratolaunch, a company dedicated to the development of hypersonic aircraft. At the weekend, Stratolaunch conducted a flight with the TA-1 test aircraft.
The objective of the test flight was to get TA-1 safely airborne, ignite the engine, accelerate and perform a controlled water landing. And that’s exactly what the Stratolaunch team managed to do, as stated on the company’s website.
Hypersonic aircraft traveling at over 6,000 km/h
Although the TA-1’s exact flight data, such as altitude and speed, are kept secret due to agreements with customers, Stratolaunch President and CEO Zachary Krevor revealed at least this much: “In addition to meeting all of the primary and customer-specific objectives of the flight, we have achieved high supersonic speeds near Mach 5 and collected a large amount of data that provides incredible value to our customers.” Mach 5 is approximately 6,175 kilometers per hour.
The aircraft was carried by the double-hull carrier aircraft Stratolaunch Roc, which has a wingspan of 117 meters. TA-1 is around four meters wide and around nine meters long. The small hypersonic aircraft is released from the carrier during flight and then continues to fly using its own engines.
TA-1 could not be reused after the test flight – but the successors TA-2 and TA-3 should be. After the successful mission, Stratolaunch is already planning further tests with the two successors. TA-2 is scheduled to be launched this year.