A cutting-edge hypersonic vehicle just hit a big flight milestone.
Stratolaunch’s reusable, autonomous Talon-A craft now has more than 10 successful flights under its belt, the California-based company announced late last month.
“Reaching more than 10 successful hypersonic flights with Talon-A is a testament to our team’s dedication and the robustness of our technology,” Stratolaunch President and CEO Zachary Krevor said in a July 22 statement. “We are transforming hypersonic testing from a rare event into a routine service, empowering our customers to innovate at unprecedented speed.”
Stratolaunch has two Talon-A vehicles, each of which is about 28 feet (8.5 meters) long with a wingspan of 11.3 feet (3.4 m). The craft can travel through Earth’s atmosphere at more than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5) — the definition of hypersonic flight.
Talon-A missions start beneath the belly of a carrier plane, which hauls the robotic vehicle into the sky and drops it down. Stratolaunch has two such carriers — a modified Boeing 747 called Spirit of Mojave and Roc, a custom-built vehicle that measures a whopping 385 feet (117 m) from wingtip to wingtip, the biggest wingspan in aviation history.
Roc and Spirit of Mojave lift off from Mojave Air and Space Port in southeastern California and tend to drop Talon-A over the Pacific Ocean. After completing its hypersonic flight, the vehicle comes back for a runway landing in California, generally at Vandenberg Space Force Base, on the state’s scenic central coast.
These jaunts test sensors and advanced new materials in the hypersonic flight environment, among other tasks. Details about Talon-A’s payloads tend to be sparse, likely because many Stratolaunch customers — the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, for example — are tight-lipped by nature.
Indeed, military agencies around the world are increasingly interested in hypersonic tech. Superfast, maneuverable vehicles like Talon-A are tougher to track and intercept than ballistic missiles, which follow predictable trajectories despite moving fast. (To be clear: Talon-A itself is not a weapon or weapon-delivery system; it’s a technology testbed.)
Stratolaunch isn’t the only company that gives customer payloads hypersonic rides. Rocket Lab provides this service with HASTE, a suborbital version of its workhorse Electron rocket.
HASTE debuted in June 2023 and now has nine flights under its belt. But the vehicle’s cadence will likely increase soon; in March, Rocket Lab signed a $190 million contract to conduct 20 HASTE missions for the U.S. military.