Air Force's X-51A Hypersonic Scramjet Makes Record-Breaking Final Flight
The U.S. military launched an experimental hypersonic aircraft on its swan song test flight Wednesday (May 1), accelerating the craft to more than five times the speed of sound in the longest-ever mission for a vehicle of its kind.
The Air Force's X-51A Waverider reached a top speed of Mach 5.1 during the test flight, traveling more than 230 nautical miles in just over six minutes before crashing into the Pacific Ocean off the California coast as planned, Air Force officials announced today. "It was a full mission success," Charlie Brink, X-51A program manager for the Air Force Research Laboratory Aerospace Systems Directorate, said in a statement.
The X-51A took off Wednesday morning from Edwards Air Force Base in California under the wing of a B-52H Stratofortress. The Waverider was released at an altitude of approximately 50,000 feet (15,000 meters) and used a solid rocket booster to accelerate to Mach 4.8 in just 26 seconds. The X-51A burned up the scramjet's four-minute fuel supply and was destroyed as expected upon impacting the Pacific Ocean. All told, the vehicle returned 370 seconds of flight data.
While there is no plan to build any more X-51A vehicles, officials said the $300 million technology demonstration program, which began in 2004, leaves a valuable legacy.
"I believe all we have learned from the X-51A Waverider will serve as the bedrock for future hypersonics research and ultimately the practical application of hypersonic flight," Brink said.
Hypersonic flight is generally defined as anything that reaches speeds above Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. (The speed of sound at sea level is about 762 mph, or 1,226 km/h.)
While most other hypersonic vehicles use hydrogen propellant, the X-51A's scramjet is powered by hydrocarbon fuel, which Air Force officials say is more logistically feasible and could allow the technology to be applied on a broader scale.
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