The US Air Force has test-flown a prototype hypersonic plane.

Launched last Thursday from California’s Vandenberg Airbase atop a Minotaur Lite booster rocket, the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle travelled 65 hundred kilometres west at speeds of up to 21 thousand kilometres an hour. The experiment lasted 30 minutes, the closing 21 of them without communication with the vehicle. The latter finally splashed down into the Central Pacific Ocean.

The US Air Force hopes to develop a robotic hypersonic plane capable of travelling at over 20 times the speed of sound.

DARPA Loses Contact with Hypersonic Vehicle

WASHINGTON — A new U.S. launcher based on strategic missile hardware made its successful suborbital debut April 22, but the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) lost contact with the payload, an experimental hypersonic vehicle, soon thereafter, the agency said April 23.

DARPA’s Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV)-2 was the first in a series of flight experiments meant to demonstrate technologies that could be the foundation for the United States’ next long-range conventional missile. It was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., atop a Minotaur 4 rocket.

Built by Lockheed Martin Corp., the HTV-2 craft was supposed to glide over the Pacific Ocean at speeds exceeding 20,000 kilometers per hour for as long as 30 minutes, DARPA said in a press release. Nine minutes after launch, however, DARPA lost contact with the craft, and the cause of the failure is still unknown, the release said. There is one remaining HTV-2 craft.