Contact lost after launch of US hypersonic plane

Aug 12, 2011, 15:42 GMT

Los Angeles - The US launched an experimental hypersonic plane Thursday capable of flying 20 times the speed of sound but lost contact with the prototype soon after it separated from its Minotaur IV launch vehicle, officials said.

The Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) is a prototype for a global strike weapons programme that could hit targets around the world within an hour.

Developed by the Pentagon research unit DARPA, the aircraft was launched Thursday morning from Vanderberg Air Force Base in Southern California and performed successfully until it reached its hypersonic glide phase, which was meant to show controllable flight. In a brief tweet DARPA, said that it had lost contact with the vehicle and that the HTV-2 had destroyed itself.

'Downrange assets did not reacquire tracking or telemetry,' DARPA said in the tweet. 'HTV-2 has an autonomous flight termination capability.'

No further details were reported.

It was the second test flight of the HTV-2. Contact was lost on the first flight in April after some nine minutes, during which the vehicle reached speeds between 17 and 22 times the speed of sound, DARPA said. Twitter link: http://bit.ly/ol3GhB DARPA link: http://www.darpa.mil/