Orbital Selected for Pegasus-Derivative Hyper-X Launch Vehicle Contract

NASA's Hyper-X Program to Aid in Developing Hypersonic Air-Breathing Aircraft

Tuesday June 3 2:26 PM EDT

Company Press Release, Source: Orbital Sciences Corporation

DULLES, Va., June 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Orbital Sciences Corporation (Nasdaq:ORBI) announced today that it has been selected by NASA's Dryden Research Center to design and produce four Pegasus(R)-derivative launch vehicles for the space agency's Hyper-X program. Hyper-X is a small unmanned research aircraft that will ride atop a Pegasus first stage booster air-launched from NASA's B-52 aircraft off the coast of California. After achieving a predetermined speed, the Hyper-X vehicle will separate from the rocket and fly under its own power, reaching speeds of up to 10 times the speed of sound and altitudes of up to 100,000 feet.

The goal of the Hyper-X program is to validate key propulsion and related technologies for the future development of air-breathing hypersonic aircraft. Currently, the world's fastest air-breathing aircraft, the SR-71 Blackbird, cruises slightly above Mach 3, or approximately 2,100 miles per hour. Hyper-X is planned to fly faster than any air-breathing aircraft has ever flown, opening the frontier for aircraft with speeds measured in miles-per-second.

Under this contract, Orbital will design, fabricate and test the Pegasus-based Hyper-X launch vehicle (HXLV), as well as provide launch services for the series of four Hyper-X flights. The flights will take place once per year between 1998 and 2001. For each mission, Orbital will provide all guidance, navigation, and control systems for the integrated rocket booster and Hyper-X vehicle. The program will be conducted at Orbital facilities in Chandler, AZ; Dulles, VA and Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA.

In order to meet the unique requirements of the Hyper-X flight test program, several significant modifications to Orbital's standard three-stage Pegasus launch vehicle are required. In addition to the deletion of the rocket's second and third stages, the fairing which normally protects satellite payloads from atmospheric damage or contamination will not be utilized, resulting in a unique aerodynamic configuration. In order to surmount that challenge, Orbital's engineers will study the vehicle's hypersonic aerodynamics via extensive wind tunnel testing and use of computational fluid dynamics. Additionally, the HXLV will encounter severe aerodynamic heating loads associated with conducting hypersonic speed tests within the atmosphere, requiring modifications to the basic Pegasus thermal protection system.

Orbital is a space and information systems company that designs,manufactures, operates and markets a broad range of affordable space infrastructure systems, satellite access products and satellite-provided services, including launch vehicles, satellites, sensors and electronics, satellite ground systems and software, satellite-based navigation and communications products, and satellite-delivered communications and Earth observation services.

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Edgar Zapata, NASA Kennedy Space Center

Shuttle Process Engineering Directorate, Fluid Systems Division