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April 14, 2019
Stratolaunch first flight
The Stratolaunch made its first flight this weekend over the Mojave Desert in the United States.
The American company Stratolaunch announced Saturday that it had carried over a California desert the first test flight of the largest aircraft in the world, whose wingspan is almost half that of an Airbus A380.
The strange aircraft, built by the legendary aeronautical engineering company Scaled Composites in the Mojave Desert, has two fuselages and is powered by six Boeing 747 engines.
Stratolaunch First Flight
It must theoretically be used to carry and drop at altitude a small rocket that will then light its engine, and will propel to space to place satellites in orbit. This is a more flexible method of accessing the space than vertical rocket takeoffs, as a large take-off runway would suffice.
"What a fantastic first flight"
The Stratolaunch aircraft took off from the airport and "spaceport" in Mojave, California at 06:58 local time (13:58 GMT), and remained in the air for two and a half hours, the company said in a statement Sunday. . Until now, the aircraft had only ground taxi tests. The maximum speed during the flight was 304 km / h (189 miles per hour, according to Stratolaunch), and the aircraft climbed to 17,000 feet, or 5182 meters.
Stratolaunch first flight
"What a fantastic first flight," said Stratolaunch general manager Jean Floyd. "Today's flight advances our mission to provide a flexible alternative solution to ground launch systems." The size of the craft, 117 meters, is larger than a football field. An Airbus A380 is 79.75 meters wide.
Image above: An illustration of the "family" of launch vehicles Stratolaunch had planned to offer. The company is ending work on its own launch systems, leaving it with the existing Pegasus XL from Northrop Grumman. Image Credit: Stratolaunch.
Stratolaunch was funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to become a new player in the small satellite launch market. But the death of Mr. Allen in October 2018 makes the future of the Stratolaunch uncertain.
For more information about Stratolaunch, visit: https://www.stratolaunch.com/
Images, Video, Text, Credits: AFP/Stratolaunch/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.
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