Photo: Kratos
There are so many organizations and people working to advance hypersonic technologies these days that it's becoming increasingly hard to keep track of them all. And even if you can keep track, the fact that many of these technologies are highly classified doesn't help you get a clear picture of what's going on.
The world is already swarming with airplanes and other contraptions that can travel faster than the speed of sound, easily passing over the Mach 1 barrier. But there's an increasing number of hardware out there that can go over Mach 5, or 3,836 mph (6,173 kph). Such speeds are called hypersonic and they are more than enough, for instance, to make a missile unstoppable.
Hypersonic speeds also open up new avenues of research in several fields, especially the military one. And it's this need for hypersonic platforms that fuels the rise of an increasing number of vehicles produced all over the world.
California-based defense contractor Kratos is one of the crews working on such vehicles. It is presently in the process of developing a hypersonic-capable engine called Zeus which will be used to power stuff to those incredible speeds, but also a couple of airborne vehicles that could be used by paying customers, the Erinyes and Dark Fury.
Zeus is a 32.5-inch diameter rocket engine. The last time we heard anything about it, back in April, it just cleared the development stage, and it is now getting ready to be put through dynamic testing.
But it is the mysterious Erinyes vehicle that's of interest to us today, after last week the company announced the first successful flight test of the technology.
The vehicle takes its name after the Furies, those unforgiving goddesses of vengeance from Greek mythology. It was first announced back in 2021, and not much is known about it (there's not even a photo of it), given its highly secret nature.
Kratos did allow itself to share the fact that, together with help from the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), the Erinyes climbed into the sky for the first time, taking off on June 12 from the NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
The test flight was called Hypersonic Test Bed-1 (HTB-1), because that's exactly what the vehicle is, a test bed. It's unclear what experiments were on board, but we are told the flight was used to collect "data for multiple experiments" ran on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense. This data will be used to validate and evaluate the different technologies being tested.
Kratos says the Erinyes is now getting ready to fly again, this time carrying another set of experiments. We're not told when the flight will happen, and we'll probably learn more about it long after it's over.
Hypersonic speeds also open up new avenues of research in several fields, especially the military one. And it's this need for hypersonic platforms that fuels the rise of an increasing number of vehicles produced all over the world.
California-based defense contractor Kratos is one of the crews working on such vehicles. It is presently in the process of developing a hypersonic-capable engine called Zeus which will be used to power stuff to those incredible speeds, but also a couple of airborne vehicles that could be used by paying customers, the Erinyes and Dark Fury.
Zeus is a 32.5-inch diameter rocket engine. The last time we heard anything about it, back in April, it just cleared the development stage, and it is now getting ready to be put through dynamic testing.
But it is the mysterious Erinyes vehicle that's of interest to us today, after last week the company announced the first successful flight test of the technology.
The vehicle takes its name after the Furies, those unforgiving goddesses of vengeance from Greek mythology. It was first announced back in 2021, and not much is known about it (there's not even a photo of it), given its highly secret nature.
Kratos did allow itself to share the fact that, together with help from the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), the Erinyes climbed into the sky for the first time, taking off on June 12 from the NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
The test flight was called Hypersonic Test Bed-1 (HTB-1), because that's exactly what the vehicle is, a test bed. It's unclear what experiments were on board, but we are told the flight was used to collect "data for multiple experiments" ran on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense. This data will be used to validate and evaluate the different technologies being tested.
Kratos says the Erinyes is now getting ready to fly again, this time carrying another set of experiments. We're not told when the flight will happen, and we'll probably learn more about it long after it's over.
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