Tag: Stratolaunch
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Pentagon Awards Hypersonics Test Contracts to Varda and Stratolaunch
The U.S. Department of Defense is turning to commercial space companies to support hypersonic weapons testing, awarding new contracts to Varda Space Industries and Stratolaunch under a Pentagon testing initiative. The Department of Defense said last week it had selected the two companies as providers for Task Area 3 of the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic…
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Rocket Report: Rocket Lab to demo cargo delivery; America’s new ICBM in trouble
Welcome to Edition 7.43 of the Rocket Report! There’s been a lot of recent news in hypersonic testing. We cover some of that in this week’s newsletter, which is just a taste of the US military’s appetite for fielding its own hypersonic weapons, and conversely, the Pentagon’s emphasis on the detection and destruction of an…
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Rocket Report: Rocket Lab to demo cargo delivery; America’s new ICBM in trouble
Welcome to Edition 7.43 of the Rocket Report! There’s been a lot of recent news in hypersonic testing. We cover some of that in this week’s newsletter, which is just a taste of the US military’s appetite for fielding its own hypersonic weapons, and conversely, the Pentagon’s emphasis on the detection and destruction of an…
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The company with the world’s largest aircraft now has a hypersonic rocket plane
Stratolaunch has finally found a use for the world’s largest airplane. Twice in the last five months, the company launched a hypersonic vehicle over the Pacific Ocean, accelerated it to more than five times the speed of sound, and autonomously landed at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Stratolaunch used the same vehicle for both…
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The company with the world’s largest aircraft now has a hypersonic rocket plane
Stratolaunch has finally found a use for the world’s largest airplane. Twice in the last five months, the company launched a hypersonic vehicle over the Pacific Ocean, accelerated it to more than five times the speed of sound, and autonomously landed at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Stratolaunch used the same vehicle for both…
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After coming back from the dead, the world’s largest aircraft just flew a real payload
Built and flown by Stratolaunch, the massive Roc aircraft took off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California on Saturday. The airplane flew out over the Pacific Ocean, where it deployed the Talon-A vehicle, which looks something like a mini space shuttle. This marked the first time this gargantuan airplane released an honest-to-goodness payload,…
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Stratolaunch flies mammoth airplane with separation test vehicle hooked onto it
The triangular Talon-A separation test vehicle can be seen attached to a pylon between the fuselages of Stratolaunch’s Roc aircraft after takeoff. (Stratolaunch via Twitter) Stratolaunch — the air-launch company founded by the late Seattle software billionaire Paul Allen — put a test version of its hypersonic vehicle through its first in-the-air trial today. The…
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Stratolaunch ascends to new heights with successful test of world’s biggest airplane
Stratolaunch’s Roc airplane flies over California’s Mojave Desert. (Stratolaunch via Twitter) Stratolaunch says its mammoth carrier airplane rose to its highest altitude yet during its seventh flight test over California’s Mojave Desert. The aerospace venture, which was established by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen more than a decade ago but is now owned by a private…
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Stratolaunch lands its mammoth airplane early after a flight test that didn’t meet all of its objectives
Stratolaunch’s twin-fuselage Roc airplane gets ready for its sixth flight test. (Stratolaunch Photo) Stratolaunch says the sixth flight test of its super-sized Roc carrier airplane ended earlier than planned when the team ran into an unexpected issue. “While completing Roc testing operations, we encountered a test result that made it clear we would not achieve…
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Stratolaunch celebrates Star Wars Day with fifth flight of its giant airplane, featuring a new pylon
Stratolaunch’s Roc airplane comes in for a Mojave landing. (Stratolaunch / NASASpaceflight.com) Stratolaunch took the “fifth” on May the 4th, otherwise known as Star Wars Day. Today brought the fifth flight test for Stratolaunch’s 385-foot-wide carrier aircraft, known as Roc (in a nod to the giant bird of Middle Eastern mythology). Roc ranks as the…