Mar 27 2004
From The Space Library
NASA's X-43A Hyper X plane set a new record for flight speed, traveling at Mach 7, which is nearly 5,000 miles (8,050 kilometers) per hour and seven times the speed of sound. The flight was also the first free flight of an aircraft powered by a supersonic combustion ramjet engine ~ a scramjet ~ a type of engine that provides thrust by funneling air and fuel into a hollow chamber at extremely high speed. The 12-foot-long (3.7-meter-long) unpiloted, experimental aircraft flew for approximately 11 seconds over the Pacific Ocean, at an altitude of 95,000 feet (approximately 29,000 meters), before NASA deliberately landed the aircraft in the ocean. NASA used a modified B-52 aircraft to carry the X-43A into the sky, launching the X-43A into flight using a Pegasus rocket mounted to the B-52. The test flight, which took place near San Nicolas Island off the California coast, originated from NASA's DFRC at Edwards Air Force Base in California. (Peter Pae, “Fast Times at 12 O'Clock High: 5,000 MPH,” Los Angeles Times, 28 March 2004; NASA, “X-43A Soars on Scramjet Power,” 27 March 2004.
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