Stratolaunch reveals its first hypersonic design for high-altitude flights

After its fifth flight of the biggest airplane ever built, Stratolaunch is readying to test a hypersonic vehicle that will launch from the huge Roc carrier aircraft.

The company announced on May 26 that it has completed the Talon-A test vehicle. A future flight of Roc will release an unpowered tool to assess its systems. The news comes just weeks after a flight to check out the landing gear.

After completing separation testing, the company will transition to flying its first hypersonic test vehicle.

The world's largest plane is in action.

The first drop tests with Roc and Talon-A are likely to be done by mid- to-late 2023, company representatives have said.

The vehicle will be tested underneath the carrier aircraft to see how the test article affects the flight dynamics. Drop tests will occur with later generations of Talon-A.

It was originally intended to be a satellite midair launch. The first test flight took place six months after the death of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

A new group of owners bought the company in October of 2019. The military programs in the United States have recently been focused on these high-speed vehicles, which travel five times the speed of sound, and are being developed by Russia and China.

The U.S. military agency stated at the time that the second phase of the program would include wind tunnel and flight testing of jet interaction effects.

The agency recently announced that a hypersonic missile prototype flew for an extended period as part of a separate program, the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept. In September 2021, the company completed a HAWC test of its own.

After completing its third and fourth test flights at the same location earlier in the year, the latest flight from the same location aced its fifth test on Star Wars Day. On the fifth test flight, a pylon flew for the first time in the history of hypersonic vehicles.

The 8,000-pound pylon includes a winch that will load Talon-A vehicles onto the platform from the ground, expediting launch preparation and reducing the need for ground support.

The company hopes the hypersonic test program will allow for outcomes such as technology development, science research or demonstrating key components for high-speed work.

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