Booster problems have delayed to early next year the Mach 10 scramjet test flight planned for this week under the A$4.6 million ($3.5 million) Hypersonic Collaborative Australia/US Experiment (HyCause).
The flight, at Australia's Woomera test range, had been postponed from March because of delays in manufacturing one of its payloads (Flight International, 8-15 November 2005).
Funded by the Australian Hypersonics Initiative (AHI) and the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the flight is intended to test three experimental payloads.
The HyCause programme's goals include testing novel fuel-injection approaches, inward-turning inlet designs and elliptical combustor-nozzle geometries for future scramjet engines.
The flight will use a two-stage Terrier-Orion sounding rocket to boost the payload. "It's not a serious problem. Range availability has led to the delay to next year," says AHI technical lead Allan Paull.
HyCause is a follow-on to Australia's HyShot scramjet test programme, which saw two successes in four flights.
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HyShot saw two successes |
Source: Flight International