US defense agency's hypersonic glider test fails

US defense agency's hypersonic glider test fails

news.ya hoo.com

LOS ANGELES – The U.S. military lost contact with an experimental hypersonic glider after it was launched by a rocket on a test flight over the Pacific Ocean last week, a defense agency said.

The Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2 was launched Thursday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., and was supposed to separate from the booster at an altitude of several hundred thousand feet and then autonomously glide at 13,000 mph to a splashdown in a sea range near Kwajalein Atoll, 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
spectrum.ieee.org

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
Air Force Launches Secretive Space Plane; 'We Don't Know When It's Coming Back'

NOTE: This vehicle is called the HTV-2 and the project is being controlled by DARPA. This is NOT the same vehicle as the X-37B, a high-altitude experimental craft which the Air Force launched -- interestingly enough -- at about the same time as the HTV-2. Many experts are assuming that these two craft are part of the same mission, which in turn suggests that the X-37B may have something to do with the HTV-2's disappearance.

Currently, the Wikipedia article on the X-37B states this about the HTV-2:

James Oberg speculates that the concurrent launch of Air Force's Hypersonic Technology Vehicle HTV-2 is related to the (X-37B) mission. Part of X-37B's mission profile might involve a simulated enemy attack, which X-37B should detect and autonomously react on it. HTV-2 was launched at 23:00 UTC on April 22, 2010, i.e., 52 min ahead of X-37B, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

I provided a link to the source article used in the Wikipedia reference in the OP above, as well as one of the recent ATS articles on the X-37B. Here is an interesting clip from the reference article:

Most of these technologies can be seen as refinements of ideas dating back to the 1960s, but one, unmentioned idea—autonomous approach—would be truly new, if speculations are correct, and it's indeed part of this spaceflight. This is the ability to identify an attacker by electromagnetic range finding and perhaps by chemical "sniffing" for effluents that an attacker might leak while trying to match up its orbit with that of the target.

To test such capabilities properly, the mission might conceivably deploy subsatellites to impersonate enemy craft, or bogies. They'd stalk the mother ship using autonomous approach techniques tested in recent years, giving it the chance to detect clues to their presence.

news.ya hoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article - same link as in OP)

Here are the Wiki's on the HTV-2 and the X-37B:
Wikipedia: HTV-2
Wikipedia: X-37

[edit on 27-4-2010 by Magnus47]

There was another thread about it yesterday.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I still think it's weird and too coincidental with the X-37B flight.

reply to post by Grey Magic


Darn, thought I had looked everywhere to make sure it hadn't been posted yet, but somehow I still missed it. Thanks for pointing it out!

I don't know if this thread is different enough to warrant its continuation or not. I understand if it needs to be closed.

I thought that in some cases threads may exist in different forums.

The other thread yesterday started off like they lost the X37-B itself, and I was like wtf?