Air-Attack.com ** Special Report **

At 12:40 p.m. PST on March 27, 2004, the second X-43A hypersonic research aircraft and its modified Pegasus booster rocket left the runway, carried aloft by NASA's B-52B launch aircraft from the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

The X-43A, mounted on a modified Pegasus booster rocket, was launched from the B-52B just before 2 p.m. The rocket boosted the X-43A up to its test altitude of about 95,000 ft. over the Pacific Ocean, where the X-43A separated from the booster and flew freely for several minutes following scramjet engine operation, in order to gather aerodynamic data.

Take-off

B-52B aircraft climbed to about 40,000 feet to release the X-43A/Pegasus booster combination, high over the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division Sea Range over the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern California.
Following rocket motor ignition, the Hyper-X Launch Vehicle, carrying the X-43A scramjet, accelerated to a velocity of approximately Mach 7 (or seven times the speed of sound) and reached an altitude of 95,000 feet.
Approximately 90 seconds after ignition, with the booster at a precise trajectory condition, the Hyper-X launch vehicle sent commands to the X-43A scramjet, which then separated from the booster.

Quotes

"It was fun all the way to Mach 7,";
Joel Sitz, X-43 Project Manager at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research at Edwards, California during a press briefing after the flight.

"We are extremely pleased with the results of the Hyper-X flight,";
"After several years of detailed analysis, design upgrades and testing to address the factors that contributed to the failure of the program's first flight, it is all the more gratifying to have carried out this successful flight test. This flight was one of the most challenging missions Orbital has ever conducted and demonstrated our ability to take on and tackle the toughest technical challenges."
"Our congratulations go out to NASA and all the partners on this program who persevered to get it right. We now have our sights set on a successful third mission to provide even more critical data to NASA's research into the field of hypersonic flight and to extend the flight speed record set today to Mach 10."
Ron Grabe, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Orbital's Launch Systems Group.

"It has been an outstanding record-breaking day. It really has,"
Larry Huebner, Hyper-X scramjet propulsion research engineer at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

Links