Rocket Lab will launch a drone on its suborbital launch vehicle as a part of a U.S. Defense Department hypersonic development project.
The mission is currently scheduled to launch in early 2025 from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 2 in Virginia. Aboard will probably be a hypersonic test vehicle for Australian company Hypersonix, SpaceNews reports.
Rocket Lab is understood for orbital launches using its Electron rocket. This test mission will, nevertheless. fly on the newer, less-heralded suborbital version of the rocket, named HASTE (“Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron”).
The hypersonic test vehicle set to fly is known as DART AE. It is a 9.8-foot-long (3 meters), 660-pound (300 kilograms) scramjet-powered technology demonstrator that may reach speeds of as much as Mach 7 (seven times the speed of sound; 5,320 mph, or 8,350 kph), in response to the Hypersonix website.
The mission will exhibit HASTE’s ‘direct inject’ capability by deploying the Hypersonix payload during ascent, while still inside Earth’s atmosphere, in response to a Rocket Lab statement.
The project is funded by the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), which focuses on accelerating the adoption of economic and dual-use technology. This role sees it partner with industrial space corporations to handle military requirements.
Each development of the test vehicle and the launch award are a part of DIU’s high-cadence testing capabilities (HyCAT) project.