WaveRider hypersonic jet targets Mach 6

WaveRider hypersonic jet targets Mach 6 

Hypersonic jet WaveRider is to undergo another test flight above the Pacific Ocean aiming to reach Mach 6.

At this speed - more than 4,300mph (6,900km/h) - it could travel from London to New York in about an hour.

The project is funded by the Pentagon and Nasa, and is part of plans to develop faster missiles.

During a test in June 2011, WaveRider travelled at Mach 5, but failed to reach the target speed.

It is one of several projects currently under way to create a hypersonic aircraft.

The research could also be used to build a commercial plane, able to reach much higher speeds than today's jets, after Concorde was decommissioned in 2003.

Five-minute flight

A B-52 bomber will lift the wingless unmanned jet from US Edwards Air Force Base in California to 50,000 feet (15,250m).

The craft will then be dropped, and after a free fall of about four seconds, its engine is supposed to ignite.

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Analysis

Jonathan MarcusBBC defence correspondent

While it's the prospect of rapid transatlantic flight that has caught the headlines, the technology in the X-51A WaveRider could have a potent military application too.

If it works, then this engine technology could power the world's first hypersonic cruise missile.

The Pentagon's ambitious Prompt Global Strike programme has the goal of enabling the US military to strike a target anywhere on Earth within an hour. The WaveRider could make such a goal a reality.

X-51A WaveRider should then climb to 70,000ft (21,300m) and eventually reach Mach 6.

The Mach number is the ratio of the speed of an object to the speed of sound. Mach 1 is the speed of sound - approximately 768mph, depending on various factors including temperature and altitude.

So Mach 6 is six times the speed of sound. Concorde's cruising speed was Mach 2 - it flew from London to New York in just over three hours.

The WaveRider test flight is expected to last for about five minutes. At the end of it, the aircraft will break into pieces and fall into the Pacific.

The test is essentially a repeat of last summer's attempt, when the hypersonic aircraft reached Mach 5, but the engine failed to attain full power.

Concorde's legacy?

European aerospace and defence giant EADS believes that hypersonic passenger flights are likely to appear in the near future. In 2011, EADS presented its own concept of a commercial high-speed aircraft designed to fly at Mach 4.

The Filton Concorde was the last of the fleet to fly when the jet was withdrawn from service

"The business community who wanted to be in New York in three hours made Concorde highly viable, and now there's interest on both sides of the Atlantic to jump a generation and go from supersonic flight to hypersonic flight," EADS' vice-president of business development, Peter Robbie, told the BBC.

"Such an aircraft will be very expensive, of course, because of the enormous amounts of energy that is required to get to such speeds.

"But the idea of going from Tokyo to Paris in two-and-a-half hours is very attractive for the business and political community - and I think that by about 2050, there may be a viable commercial aircraft."

In August 2011, US military scientists attempted to get another unmanned hypersonic experimental aircraft to reach Mach 20 - 20 times the speed of sound.

However, they lost contact with the Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) after it had separated from its rocket.