Hypersonic

Proving that you can't keep a good technology down, Reaction Engines' Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE) has a new lease on life after a British-led consortium announced Invictus, a new program to build a Mach 5+ spaceplane.

Reaction Engine's Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE) comes closer to reality as ESA and the UK Space Agency (UKSA) green light the preliminary design of the hypersonic demonstrator engine core designed to act as both a jet and a rocket.

Reaction Engines' single-stage-to-orbit Skylon spacecraft took a step closer to reality today as BAE Systems announced that it would buy a 20 percent stake in the company.

The University of Queensland’s Scramspace project hopes to launch its unmanned scramjet vehicle from a test range in Norway early next week. We caught up with Professor Russell Boyce to talk about Scramspace, the test flight, and the future of scramjet technology.

Designed and built in Brisbane, Australia by the University of Queensland (UQ), the Scramspace is a hypersonic scramjet that will be fired by rocket in the Arctic Circle, where it will very briefly fly fast enough to travel from London to Australia in two hours.

NASA has successfully tested an inflatable heat shield in hypersonic flight.

Inflatable reentry systems are under serious development and testing by NASA, which will conduct the third in a series of suborbital test flights of its IRVE-3 project in the coming months.

NASA has announced funding to develop a hypersonic fixed wing air/space vehicle capable of flight speeds between Mach 8 and Mach 20, which could one day take the first humans to Mars.