From a hangar at Edwards Air Force U.S. in the Mojave Desert (California), a team of aerospace engineers tuned the device, which could cover the distance between New York and London in less than an hour.
The project, developed by the U.S. space agency (NASA) and the Agency Advanced Research Projects U.S. Defense (DARPA), was tested by anchoring the X-51A Waverider to the wing of a former B-52 bomber. The X-51A WaveRider should have flown at hypersonic speed for 300 seconds to dive later in the Pacific Ocean.
Although the same sources were unable to provide information on the results obtained, have been successfully completed, the ship should have been destroyed during testing, making it impossible to recover, but the engineers could use all the data recorded during the flight to the development of hypersonic technology in military applications.
The X51A test flight was the third experiment of a program that began in 2004. The first Waverider, built by Boeing, was tested in May 2010 at 3,500 kilometers per hour for 143 seconds, before a technical failure put an end to the test ahead of time, and the second, who was executed in June 2011 and also ended earlier than expected but it did generate concrete data.
The Air Force plans to develop and use technology to move hypersonic missiles or aircraft anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes instead of hours, in order not to let the enemy reaction time. Besides the speed, the aircraft will fly at high altitude hypersonic away from enemy fire or a missile. NASA and the Pentagon is funding three national centers in the country to study the hypersonic flight.
The WaveRider program will cost $ 140 million as estimated by the military development website, Globalsecurity.com. DARPA,hypersonic,military,NASA,Pentagon,Technology,WaveRider,X-51A
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