Unmanned Vehicle To Gather Valuable Data
NASA has set Saturday, March 27, for the flight of its
experimental X-43A hypersonic research aircraft. The unmanned
12-foot-long vehicle, part aircraft and part spacecraft, will be
dropped from the wing of a modified B-52 aircraft, boosted to
nearly 100,000 feet altitude by a booster rocket and released over
the Pacific Ocean to briefly fly under its own power at seven times
the speed of sound, almost 5,000 mph. The flight is part of the
Hyper-X program, a research effort designed to demonstrate
alternate propulsion technologies for access to space and
high-speed flight within the atmosphere. It will provide unique
"first time" free flight data on hypersonic air-breathing engine
technologies that have large potential pay-offs.