Hypersonic X-51A WaveRider lost over the Pacific

(Before It's News)

From NextBigFuture.com

After approximately 15 seconds of flight, the experimental aircraft designed to fly at six times the speed of sound was unable to maintain control during a test run Tuesday and was lost, the Air Force said in a statement.

The unmanned X-51A WaveRider was expected to reach Mach 6 after it was dropped by a B-52 bomber off the Southern California coast near Point Mugu, but a faulty control fin compromised the flight.

“It is unfortunate that a problem with this subsystem caused a termination before we could light the Scramjet engine,” Charlie Brink, the X-51A program manager, said in a statement. “All our data showed we had created the right conditions for engine ignition and we were very hopeful to meet our test objectives.”

Read more »

See more and subscribe to NextBigFuture at NextBigFuture.com

• AI, Robotics and Sensors everywhere timeline
• Tractor Beam Works In Lab On Increasingly Larger Objects: First Direct Observations Of Quantum Effects In An Optomechanical System
• Future Increases In US Natural Gas Exports And Domestic Prices May Not Be As Large As Thought Says Rice Study
• Helium In Moon’s Atmosphere Detected By Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s LAMP Spectrometer
• Global-Scale Geomagnetic Reversals And Failed Reversals Reveal Man’s First Migrations Into China
• Most Massive And Luminous Galaxy Cluster Wows Astronomers: Detection May Confirm Long-Held Theory
• Success Of Engineered Tissue Depends On Where It’s Grown
• Swedish Humanities Graduates Face Dim Financial Prospects [Aardvarchaeology]
• They’re NASA and they know it! [Dynamics of Cats]
• 5 Uniquely Creative Photo Apps For The iPhone