Hypersonic

China is reminding the world that it is very much in the race to deploy hypersonic missiles, with the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics of Northwestern Polytechnical University successfully launching the Feitian-1, a RBCC-propelled vehicle.

In a double-shot of hypersonics news, the US Air Force has conducted an air-launched flight test of its AGM-183A hypersonic missile, while DARPA has successfully test fired a prototype of its OpFires ground-based hypersonic missile launch system.

Reaction Engines has built a precooler for its SABRE engine that can chill a hypersonic airstream from 1,000 °C to -150 °C in 1/20th of a second. Now it's doing tests with the USAF and DoD to prove it can upgrade other existing jets to handle Mach 4.

"Top Gun: Maverick" has quickly become a monumental success at the box office, but the film's producers couldn't have done it without leveraging the expertise of some of the world's foremost experts in all things aerospace from Lockheed Martin Skunk Works.

The world's largest flying aircraft has reached record heights, with Stratolaunch today completing the seventh test flight of its gigantic Roc carrier plane and logging a record altitude for the huge aircraft in the process.

For the first time, the US Air Force has successfully recovered a reusable rocket sled traveling at hypersonic speed. The test in late March was part of the USAF's Hypersonic Sled Recovery project and saw the sled reach 5.6 times the speed of sound.

Back in 2020 we first heard about the Talon-A hypersonic aircraft, which would be released from the world's largest airplane at an altitude of 35,000 ft (10,000 m). A test version of the Talon-A, called the TA-0, was unveiled this week.

It was fourth time's the charm as the US Air Force successfully launched its hypersonic AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) from a B-52H Stratofortress on May 14 off the coast of Southern California, following three failures.

Green Launch says it can fire a space vehicle skywards three times faster than SpinLaunch's kinetic launch system. Its huge hydrogen gas cannon can produce hypersonic launch velocities upwards of Mach 17, enabling orbital altitudes up to 1,000 km.

DARPA, the US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), Lockheed Martin, and Aerojet Rocketdyne have successfully conducted a second test flight of a Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) hypersonic missile, over an undisclosed location.

A UK company says it's demonstrated fusion in record time, on a shoestring US$59 million budget, using an innovative new approach that embeds fuel pellets in tiny, falling cube targets, then shoots projectiles at them at 19 times the speed of sound.

The US Air Force Research Laboratory and Air Force Office of Scientific Research are planning to live-stream a rocket launch in Virginia tonight, running hypersonic tests on the Bolt II flight system at speeds up to Mach 6.