NASA Jet Will Try to Go 7,000 Mph
In March, NASA launched an experimental jet that reached a record-setting speed of about 5,000 mph. Now researchers want to leave that milestone in the dust.
NASA's third and last X-43A "scramjet" was set to streak over the Pacific Ocean on Monday at 7,000 mph for 10 or 11 seconds — or 10 times the speed of sound.
The first X-43A flight failed in June 2001 when the booster rocket used to accelerate it to flight speed veered off course and had to be destroyed. The second flight in March was a success, reaching Mach 6.83 — nearly 5,000 mph — and setting a new world speed record for a plane powered by an air-breathing engine.
The last hypersonic X-43A will try, weather permitting, to break that record by making its advanced supersonic combustion ramjet perform at a level that can't even be tested on the ground, project officials said Wednesday from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
"What we're trying to do is really get to the reality of flight — find out what does work, what doesn't work. So there is risk in this program," said Vince Rausch, Hyper-X program manager at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia.
"We fully anticipate that we've reduced that risk to acceptable levels but you never are sure, especially in doing something for the first time, going Mach 10, until we actually fly."
