The Aurora X-65 CRANE is an experimental aircraft that is currently under development. In charge are the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences. [1] [2]
The Aurora X-65 CRANE is an experimental aircraft that is currently under development. In charge are the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences. [1] [2]
Purpose of the X-65 aircraft is to demonstrate the feasibility of Active Flow Control (AFC). AFC utilizes bursts of air rather than moving flight control surfaces on the exterior of the wings and tail to control its flight. [3]
Aurora Flight Sciences embarked on the development of an experimental X-plane, as part of the DARPA's CRANE programme, in November 2020. Wind tunnel testing was also conducted in San Diego, California, in May 2022. DARPA allocated funds for the detailed engineering design of a full-scale X-plane in December 2022. Aurora Flight Sciences was commissioned to construct a full-scale X-plane in January 2024. [4]
The acronym CRANE refers to a DARPA programme called Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors. DARPA announced the X-65 designation on its social media accounts May 15th 2023. [5]
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.
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 to date have been rocket-powered for takeoff and climb, but have then landed as unpowered gliders.
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Lockheed Have Blue was the code name for Lockheed's proof of concept demonstrator for a stealth fighter. Have Blue was designed by Lockheed's Skunk Works division, and tested at Groom Lake, Nevada. The Have Blue was the first fixed-wing aircraft whose external shape was defined by radar engineering rather than by aerospace engineering. The aircraft's faceted shape was designed to deflect electromagnetic waves in directions other than that of the originating radar emitter, greatly reducing its radar cross-section.
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The DARPA FALCON Project is 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 aims 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 aims 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 Expandable 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.
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Hypersonic flight is flight through the atmosphere below altitudes of about 90 km at speeds greater than Mach 5, a speed where dissociation of air begins to become significant and high heat loads exist. Speeds over Mach 25 have been achieved below the thermosphere as of 2020.
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Aurora Flight Sciences is an American aviation and aeronautics research subsidiary of Boeing which primarily specializes in the design and construction of special-purpose Unmanned aerial vehicles. Aurora has been established for 20+ years and their headquarters is at the Manassas Regional Airport in Manassas, Virginia.
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Flow control is a field of fluid dynamics. It involves a small configuration change to serve an ideally large engineering benefit, like drag reduction, lift increase, mixing enhancement or noise reduction. This change may be accomplished by passive or active devices.
The DARPA XS-1 was an experimental spaceplane/booster with the planned capability to deliver small satellites into orbit for the U.S. Military. It was reported to be designed to be reusable as frequently as once a day, with a stated goal of doing so for 10 days straight. The XS-1 was intended to directly replace the first stage of a multistage rocket by taking off vertically and flying to hypersonic speed and high suborbital altitude, enabling one or more expendable upper stages to separate and deploy a payload into low Earth orbit. The XS-1 would then return to Earth, where it could ostensibly be serviced fast enough to repeat the process at least once every 24 hours.
The Lockheed Martin SR-72, colloquially referred to as "Son of Blackbird", is an American hypersonic UAV concept intended for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) proposed privately in 2013 by Lockheed Martin as a successor to the retired Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. In 2018, company executives said an SR-72 test vehicle could fly by 2025 and enter service in the 2030s.
The Vertical Take-Off and Landing Experimental Aircraft program is an American research project sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The goal of the program is to demonstrate a VTOL aircraft design that can take off vertically and efficiently hover, while flying faster than conventional rotorcraft. There have been many previous attempts, most of them unsuccessful.
The Aurora XV-24 LightningStrike is an experimental unmanned aerial vehicle created by Aurora Flight Sciences and partners Rolls-Royce and Honeywell. It was developed for the Vertical Take-Off and Landing Experimental Aircraft program.