Overview
- Launched on February 27 at 7 p.m. ET from Wallops Island’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, the demonstrator flew a planned suborbital profile and splashed down in the Atlantic.
- Hypersonix confirmed the vehicle exceeded Mach 5 during the test, with telemetry now under analysis to validate propulsion, materials, sensors and guidance performance.
- One outlet reported a top speed of Mach 8 and roughly 540 nautical miles flown, a detail not yet corroborated by official data releases.
- The 3.5‑meter DART AE uses a 3D‑printed, high‑temperature airframe and a hydrogen‑fueled SPARTAN scramjet to prove technologies for sustained hypersonic flight.
- The flight follows a US$46 million Series A and comes as Rocket Lab logs multiple HASTE missions for DIU, enabling a faster test cadence for allied hypersonic programs.