Stratolaunch, the manufacturer and operator of the aerospace vehicles, has announced the completion of a captive carry flight with the first powered Talon-A hypersonic vehicle, TA-1.
This was the twelfth for the company's launch platform Roc , since the restart of the program, and the first to carry a Talon vehicle with live propellant as part of the buildup approach for Talon-A's first powered flight.
As per Stratolaunch, the flight lasted a total of three hours and 22 minutes and represented a significant step forward in the company's near-term goal of completing a powered flight with the Talon-A vehicle, TA-1. A primary objective was to evaluate Talon-A's propulsion system and the Talon environments while carrying live propellant.
A second objective was to verify Roc and TA-1's telemetry systems, which provides the situational awareness to ensure all systems are ready for powered flight during the release sequence.
"Talon-A's propulsion system supports a liquid-propellant rocket engine that provides the thrust needed for Talon-A to reach hypersonic speeds. While we have conducted several successful ground tests fueling and igniting the system, we needed to evaluate how the system performs in the flight environment prior to release," said Dr. Zachary Krevor, Chief Executive Officer for Stratolaunch.
"Initial results from today's flight show that the system has performed as predicted, and we will determine our next steps pending the full data review of the test."
► Stratolaunch has a twin-fuselage configuration, each 238 ft (73 m) long and supported by 12 main Landing gear (MLG) wheels and two nose gear wheels (NLG) , for a total of 28 wheels.
► The longest wingspan ever flown, at 385 feet (117 m), more than the Hughes H-4 Hercules flying boat (321 feet).
► The Stratolaunch can carry a 550,000-pound payload & has a 1,300,000-pound MTOW.
► It flew on April 13, 2019, at the Mojave Air & Space Port, reaching an altitude of 17,000 ft & speed of 305 km/h in the duration of 2 h 29 min flight.
► After the first flight, it halted the development of air-launched family of launch vehicles due to the death of founder Paul Allen in Oct-2018.
► The company ceased its operations the next month, and placed all company assets, including the aircraft, for sale for US$400 million by June 2019.
► New investor , Cerberus Capital Management acquired Stratolaunch Systems including the Stratolaunch aircraft in Oct- 2019.
► Stratolaunch is now focussing on establishment of this carrier aircraft, as it compares itself with other existing carrier vehicles.
Concurrent to TA-1 testing, Stratolaunch is progressing on the manufacturing of the TA-2 and TA-3 vehicles, the first fully reusable vehicles in that Talon-A product line.
In addition to meeting this key test milestone, the company also recently announced two flight contracts with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and the Navy's Multiservice Advanced Capability Test Bed (MACH-TB) program as a subcontractor to Leidos/Dynetics.
"It's an exciting time for our team and customers as we grow closer to bringing our test service online. We're moving faster into the future of high-speed flight, and I'm proud of our team's tenacity to reach this point."
Program announced in Dec-2011 & rolled out in May 2017, the Model 351 'Stratolaunch' (Reg- N351SL) , which is now known as "Stratolaunch Roc" , is an aircraft built for Stratolaunch Systems by Scaled Composites to carry air-launch-to-orbit rockets.
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