Stratolaunch’s massive Roc aircraft lifted Talon-A’s fully fueled hypersonic vehicle into the air for the first time. The second runs on liquid fuel and will later take off on an independent flight. The plane has become a test bed for him, thanks to which the company will begin to sell services for testing hypersonic equipment and technologies to everyone.

The flight, made with the hypersonic device that refueled the double-fuselage aircraft “Ptakh Rukh” (Roc) with a wingspan of 117 m, was the 12th in his flight career. The flight lasted 3 hours and 22 minutes. A special pylon with a winch was fixed between the two fuselages under the wing to attach the payload, which is the prototype of the Talon-A hypersonic glider. At the airport, the glider is pulled towards the pylon and fixed. At an altitude of 10,000 meters in the air, the glider will separate and develop a speed of over Mach 5 on its liquid engines and then land on the runway.

The fuselage has a large number of compartments in which it will be possible to test electronics and mechanisms for future hypersonic aircraft and missiles, including those with limited access. So, the company Stratolaunch has already signed an agreement with such a large representative of the US military industry as Leidos to conduct five hypersonic tests.

Stratolaunch was founded in 2011 by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Paul died in 2018 and so the company went into free flight. In 2019, Stratolaunch management decided to abandon Paul’s “air launch” ideas of sending rockets into space from under the wings of the Roc plane. Instead, it was decided to turn the plane into a laboratory where supersonic technologies would be tested.

The plane’s flight with a fully fueled hypersonic vehicle on December 3 brought that moment even closer. After analyzing all the data, Stratolaunch management will decide on the first launch of the hypersonic vehicle with the engines on. A motorless reset was successfully carried out in May this year. It’s time to fly with your own wings!