Mach 20 test goes awry, military craft lost
CBS News
By Tariq Malik
August 11, 2011
The U.S. military lost contact with an unmanned hypersonic glider shortly after it launched on a test flight today (Aug. 12) as part of a global strike weapons program to develop vehicles capable of flying at Mach 20 and reach any target in the world in an hour. …
According to DARPA updates, the test flight appeared to go well until the glide phase, when monitoring stations lost contact with the HTV-2 vehicle. …
“Range assets have lost telemetry with HTV2,” DARPA officials wrote in a Twitter post about 36 minutes after launch.
Monitoring stations further down range of the vehicle’s flight path over the Pacific Ocean also did not find the hypersonic HTV-2 glider. The vehicle is designed to crash itself into the ocean at the end of its mission.
“Downrange assets did not reacquire tracking or telemetry. HTV2 has an autonomous flight termination capability,” DARPA officials wrote.
Whether the test flight met all of its objecties still remains unclear, but this is the second test flight of the Falcon HTV–2 program that ended prematurely. An April 2010 test flight ended nine minutes into flight, also due to loss of contact. …
Read on: www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/11/scitech/main20091239.shtml
