Home

On:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced that their hypersonic HTV-2 test aircraft crashed during an August 11 flight test, but not before demonstrating that it could maintain control at twenty times the speed of sound — for three minutes, at least.

DARPA’s unmanned prototype Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) was launched from Vandenberg AFB in California, and was propelled above the atmosphere by a Minotaur IV rocket. The HTV-2 then proceeded to glide along it’s planned course over the Pacific Ocean, but encountered a still-unidentified anomaly nine minutes into the mission, prompting the craft’s automated systems to ditch the plane in a controlled splashdown.
read more