By Brian Berger
Space News Staff Writer
Testing is under way at NASA's Langley Research Center on a jet-fueled, air-breathing engine like the one that will power the U.S. Air Force's X-51 WaveRider vehicle as it sets out in late 2009 to set new records in hypersonic flight.
Aiming for top speeds approaching Mach 7 (around 5,000 miles or 8,050 kilometers per hour), X-51 is not intended to be the fastest air-breathing vehicle the United States has built. But it is the most complicated, designed to achieve five or six minutes of powered flight before doing a controlled glide into the ocean.
Six minutes might not sound like much, but the X-43A, the NASA-led project that set a speed record of 7,545 miles (12,144 kilometers) per hour (Mach 9.8) in November 2004 on the vehicle's third and final flight, fired its supersonic-combustion ramjet for all of about 10 seconds. Read more
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