Stratolaunch flight reaches record altitude
MOJAVE — Stratolaunch’s behemoth carrier aircraft, dubbed Roc, reached its highest altitude yet during its seventh test flight, on Thursday.
During the more than three-hour flight, the airplane reached 27,000 feet altitude, a new record for this unique craft.
The twin-fuselage aircraft took off from its home base at the Mojave Air and Space Port, at 7:40 a.m., and landed safely back on the same runway, at 10:41 a.m.
The test flight continued the flight envelope expansion for the aircraft with a pylon attached beneath the center of the wing. This attachment will be used to carry aloft the company’s Talon-A hypersonic vehicles, bringing them to altitude before releasing them for launch.
The flight continued to test the aircraft’s performance and handling with the pylon attached and continued landing gear and gear door testing.
This was the third flight for Roc with the pylon attached.
The flight also marked a relatively quick turn-around from its previous test flight, in exactly one week. That test flight, the sixth, was cut short after nearly an hour and a half, reportedly due to a malfunctioning sensor on the left wing.
“Today’s flight is a success story of the Stratolaunch team’s ability to increase operational tempo to the pace desired by our customers for performing frequent hypersonic flight test,” Stratolaunch CEO and President Zachary Krevor said. “Furthermore, the team reached a new altitude record of 27,000 feet, thereby demonstrating the aircraft performance needed for our Talon hypersonic vehicle to reach its wide design range of hypersonic conditions.”
Once envisioned as an air-launch platform for sending small satellites and payloads into orbit, Stratolaunch has since directed its energy to devel
oping a hypersonic testbed, using the behemoth aircraft as an air launch platform. The company is developing the Talon-A hypersonic test vehicle to fly from Roc.
Hypersonic refers to speeds in excess of Mach 5 and is a frontier researchers have been striving to effectively employ for decades. The field has recently gained traction, with projects in development on a number of fronts.
The rocket-powered, autonomous and reusable Talon-A test bed vehicles may carry customizable payloads, enabling scientific research, technology development and component demonstration at hypersonic speeds.
The unpowered TA-0 vehicle is on track to begin captive carry and separation testing later this year, before moving on to the TA-1 hypersonic flight test vehicle. The company expects to deliver services for government and civilian commercial customers, in 2023.