A scramjet is a variant of a ramjet airbreathing jet engine in which combustion takes place in supersonic airflow. As in ramjets, a scramjet relies on high vehicle speed to compress the incoming air forcefully before combustion, but whereas a ramjet decelerates the air to subsonic velocities before combustion using shock cones, a scramjet has no shock cone and slows the airflow using shockwaves produced by its ignition source in place of a shock cone. This allows the scramjet to operate efficiently at extremely high speeds.
The NASA Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC) is an aeronautical research center operated by NASA. Its primary campus is located inside Edwards Air Force Base in California and is considered NASA's premier site for aeronautical research. AFRC operates some of the most advanced aircraft in the world and is known for many aviation firsts, including supporting the first crewed airplane to exceed the speed of sound in level flight, highest speed by a crewed, powered aircraft, the first pure digital fly-by-wire aircraft, and many others. AFRC operates a second site next to Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, known as Building 703, once the former Rockwell International/North American Aviation production facility. There, AFRC houses and operates several of NASA's Science Mission Directorate aircraft including SOFIA, a DC-8 Flying Laboratory, a Gulfstream C-20A UAVSAR and ER-2 High Altitude Platform. As of 2023, Bradley Flick is the center's director.
A spaceplane is a vehicle that can fly and glide like an aircraft in Earth's atmosphere and maneuver like a spacecraft in outer space. To do so, spaceplanes must incorporate features of both aircraft and spacecraft. Orbital spaceplanes tend to be more similar to conventional spacecraft, while sub-orbital spaceplanes tend to be more similar to fixed-wing aircraft. All spaceplanes as of 2024 have been rocket-powered for takeoff and climb, but have then landed as unpowered gliders.
The NASA X-43 was an experimental unmanned hypersonic aircraft with multiple planned scale variations meant to test various aspects of hypersonic flight. It was part of the X-plane series and specifically of NASA's Hyper-X program developed in the late 1990s. It set several airspeed records for jet aircraft. The X-43 is the fastest jet-powered aircraft on record at approximately Mach 9.6.
Pegasus is an air-launched multistage rocket developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC) and later built and launched by Northrop Grumman. Pegasus is the world's first privately developed orbital launch vehicle. Capable of carrying small payloads of up to 443 kg (977 lb) into low Earth orbit, Pegasus first flew in 1990 and remained active as of 2021. The vehicle consists of three solid propellant stages and an optional monopropellant fourth stage. Pegasus is released from its carrier aircraft at approximately 12,000 m (39,000 ft) using a first stage wing and a tail to provide lift and altitude control while in the atmosphere. The first stage does not have a thrust vector control (TVC) system.
Orbital Sciences Corporation was an American company specializing in the design, manufacture, and launch of small- and medium- class space and launch vehicle systems for commercial, military and other government customers. In 2014, Orbital merged with Alliant Techsystems (ATK) to create a new company called Orbital ATK, which in turn was purchased by Northrop Grumman in 2018.
Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) is a rocket launch site on Wallops Island on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, United States, just east of the Delmarva Peninsula and approximately 100 miles (160 km) north-northeast of Norfolk. The facility is operated by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and primarily serves to support science and exploration missions for NASA and other federal agencies. WFF includes an extensively instrumented range to support launches of more than a dozen types of sounding rockets; small expendable suborbital and orbital rockets; high-altitude balloon flights carrying scientific instruments for atmospheric and astronomical research; and, using its Research Airport, flight tests of aeronautical research aircraft, including unmanned aerial vehicles.
Planetspace is not in business as its corporate status was revoked by Canadian government due to non-compliance with filing requirements. It’s last annual meeting was held in 2010 and no filings since then.
The DARPA FALCON Project was a two-part joint project between the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the United States Air Force (USAF) and is part of Prompt Global Strike. The first part of the project aimed to develop a Small Launch System (SLS) capable of accelerating hypersonic gliding weapons as well as launching small satellites into Earth orbit. The second part of the project aimed to develop Hypersonic Weapon Systems (HWS): a short term high performance hypersonic gliding weapon previously named the X-41 Common Aero Vehicle (CAV) that could be launched from Expendable Launch Vehicles (ELV), Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLVs), Hypersonic Cruise Vehicles (HCV), or Space Maneuvering Vehicles (SMP), and a long term hypersonic cruise aircraft named the Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV). This two-part program was announced in 2003 and continued into 2006.
Scramjet programs refers to research and testing programs for the development of supersonic combustion ramjets, known as scramjets. This list provides a short overview of national and international collaborations, and civilian and military programs. The USA, Russia, India, and China (2014), have succeeded at developing scramjet technologies.
Lockheed L-301 was an experimental air-breathing hypersonic aircraft project. It was developed by the NASA and United States Air Force (USAF) organization National Hypersonic Flight Research Facility, with Skunk Works as the prime contractor. In January 1977, the program was "tentatively scheduled to operate two vehicles for eight years and to conduct 100 flights per vehicle." NASA discontinued work on L-301 and NHRF in September 1977 due to budget constraints and lack of need.
The Hy-V Scramjet Flight Experiment is a research project being led by the University of Virginia, the goal of which is to better understand dual-mode scramjet combustion by analyzing and comparing wind tunnel and flight data. The work is being conducted with industrial, academic and government collaborators.
Antares, known during early development as Taurus II, is an American expendable medium-lift launch vehicle developed and built by Orbital Sciences Corporation with financial support from NASA under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program awarded in February 2008, alongside the company's automated cargo spacecraft, Cygnus. Like other launch vehicles developed by Orbital, Antares leveraged lower-cost, off-the-shelf parts and designs.
Cygnus is an expendable American automated cargo spacecraft designed for International Space Station (ISS) resupply missions. It was initially developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation with financial support from NASA under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. To create Cygnus, Orbital paired a pressurized cargo module, largely based on the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, built by Thales Alenia Space and previously used by the Space Shuttle for ISS resupply, with a service module based on Orbital's GEOStar, a satellite bus. After a successful demonstration flight in 2013, Orbital was chosen to receive a Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract. A larger Enhanced Cygnus was introduced in 2015. Orbital Sciences merged into Orbital ATK in 2015; Northrop Grumman purchased Orbital ATK in 2018 and has continued to operate Cygnus missions. A further enlarged Mission B Cygnus is expected to be introduced in 2025.
Launch Pad 0 (LP-0), also known as Launch Complex 0 (LC-0), or Launch Area 0 (LA-0), is a launch complex at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island, Virginia, in the United States. MARS is located right next to the NASA Wallops Flight Facility (WFF), which had run the launch complex until 2003. WFF still provides support services to MARS launches under a contract with the Commonwealth of Virginia.
HyShot is a research project of The University of Queensland, Australia Centre for Hypersonics, to demonstrate the possibility of supersonic combustion under flight conditions using two scramjet engines, one designed by The University of Queensland and one designed by QinetiQ.
General Applied Science Laboratory (GASL) is an American aerospace company, known as a pioneer of hypersonic propulsion.
Small Payload Quick Return (SPQR) is a NASA Ames Research Center concept to return small payloads from orbit.
Space Vector Corporation (SVC) is a United States-based company that provides aerospace products and services to government and commercial customers. Space Vector is headquartered in Chatsworth, California and is a privately held small business. Its primary products are flight safety and system batteries, GPS tracking systems, custom avionics and structures, attitude control systems, pneumatic components, and separation systems. Space Vector also provides launch services as a prime contractor under the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) Sounding Rocket Program (SRP-3) which includes performing vehicle integration activities, end-to-end system testing, payload integration, launch operations, and mission analysis and design.
NG-16, previously known as OA-16, was the sixteenth flight of the Northrop Grumman robotic resupply spacecraft Cygnus and its fifteenth flight to the International Space Station (ISS) under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-2) contract with NASA. The mission was launched on 10 August 2021 at 22:01:05 UTC, for a (planned) 90-day mission at the ISS. This was the fifth launch of Cygnus under the CRS-2 contract.
