Nasa craft aims to pass 7,000mph barrier

Nasa is due to launch an experimental jet over the Pacific today in a bid to reach a record 7,000 mph.

The first X-43A flight failed in June 2001 when the booster rocket used to accelerate it to flight speed veered off course and had to be destroyed.

The second flight in March was a success, reaching Mach 6.83 – nearly 5,000 mph – and setting a new world speed record for a plane powered by an air-breathing engine.

The last hypersonic X-43A will try, weather permitting, to break that record by making its advanced supersonic combustion ramjet perform at a level that cannot be tested on the ground, project officials said at Nasa’s Dryden Flight Research Centre in California.

Just 12 feet long and five feet wide, the unmanned X-43A is mounted on the nose of a Pegasus rocket that will be carried aloft to 40,000 feet by Nasa’s B-52 research aircraft and released.

The Pegasus rocket will ignite and carry the X-43A to an altitude of 110,000 feet and a speed of about Mach 10, then release it for its brief powered flight.

The X-43A will then become a glider and perform manoeuvres until it splashes down into the ocean.

That will be the end of the X-43A project, which has cost more than €177m and has no immediate follow-on programme.

Scramjet technology may be used in developing hypersonic missiles and aircraft or reusable space launch vehicles, with a potential for offering speeds of at least Mach 15.

Unlike rockets, scramjets would not have to carry heavy oxidiser necessary to allow fuel to burn because they can scoop oxygen out of the atmosphere.