When a rocket launches from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in the US state of Virginia this weekend, it will carry with it a product of Australia – a hypersonic aircraft helping forge the future of flight.
The aircraft, called the DART AE, was developed by Brisbane-based Hypersonix Launch Systems, led by former NASA research scientist Michael Smart and a team of University of Queensland engineers.
If all goes to plan, the DART will travel through the upper atmosphere for about 800 kilometres at around Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. That’s more than 6000km/h.
And it’s not just a tube being shot into the air. The 3.5-metre-long vehicle – powered by a 3D-printed, hydrogen-fuelled scramjet engine that compresses incoming air using high-speed shockwaves – can be manoeuvred. It is, for all intents and purposes, an aircraft.
“Most hypersonic craft are rockets. Rockets can’t manoeuvre. You just point and shoot them,” Smart says. “The manoeuvrability is an absolutely critical new characteristic … Anything you think an aircraft does, we can do.”
Organisers were tight-lipped about the flight plan, other than to say they were aiming to conduct the longest hypersonic flight ever staged by a hydrogen-powered vehicle. It could travel up to 800 kilometres, with the aircraft’s metallic skin heating up to 800 degrees.
This is the first launch mission for Hypersonix, founded at the end of 2019 by Smart, who for 15 years was a professor of hypersonic propulsion at UQ. The growing firm was selected as a partner by the US Defence Innovation Unit – part of what is now the Department of War – from a field of more than 60 applicants.
“Just to get in the air is a big deal for this company, and it’s a big deal for Australia,” Smart says.
Testing this kind of technology is vital for the future of hypersonic flight, which, beyond its scientific applications, will eventually transform the way people travel.
Hypersonix chief executive Matt Hill, who is in Virginia with Smart and a team of 10 for the mission, says this type of engine could power an aircraft that will fly from Sydney to London in two hours. It’s not pie-in-the-sky stuff, either – he says it could be technologically possible in 10 or so years, though the logistics of flying people long distances make it challenging.
“When people fly, they expect air and champagne and movies – all those things – and that’s really the more complex thing,” Hill says. “It’s still a way off. But we’re building the core technology that would enable that type of flight.”
The DART will separate from the rocket at 45 kilometres above earth. Like all missions of this nature, there is a risk of failure, but the team is prepared to learn from anything that goes wrong.
This week’s flight was initially scheduled for Monday (Virginia time), but was delayed by bad weather and external circumstances. It is now planned for Friday afternoon (Saturday morning AEDT), but could be pushed back again.
Hypersonix has 58 staff in Australia, most aged under 30, while UQ ranks as one of the world’s leading universities in hypersonic research. The DART was assembled in Brisbane and transported to the US “with great difficulty”.
The engine used in this flight is the fastest scramjet engine in the world today, Smart says, with the potential to power a vehicle to 12 times the speed of sound.
Where Australia falls down, Smart says, is in the commercialisation of its research and development. “That’s what we’re really trying to do here.”
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.
