X-51A Waverider New Hypersonic Speed World Record

A historic flight took place on May 26, in the skies off the southern California Pacific coast. For the first time in history, a hypersonic flight test vehicle managed to travel for over 200 seconds at Mach 5, five times the speed of sound, shattering the previous 12 seconds run set by a NASA X-43 vehicle. The feat is compared by those who created the vehicle to the leap from propeller to jet engine.

The name of the vehicle which set the record is X-51A Waverider and is powered by a Pratt & Whitney air breathing scramjet engine. The unit uses a mix of ethylene and JP-7 jet fuel in the first burn phase, switching afterwards to JP-7 jet fuel alone (Waverider became the first use of a practical hydrocarbon fueled scramjet in flight).

The vehicle, launched from under the left wing of an Air Force Flight Test Center B-52 Stratofortress at 50,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean, reached an altitude of 70,000 feet and the aforementioned Mach 5 speed. It kept the speed for 200 seconds, after which the test flight was considered terminated.

"We are ecstatic to have accomplished most of our test points on the X-51A's very first hypersonic mission," Charlie Brink, X-51A program manager with the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base said in a statement. "We equate this leap in engine technology as equivalent to the post-World War
Two jump from propeller-driven aircraft to jet engines."

According to USAF, four X-51A cruisers have been built by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Boeing. More record breaking attempts are scheduled for the near future, with further tests scheduled for this fall.