http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/04/26/national/a143633D74.DTL
US defense agency’s hypersonic glider test fails
Monday, April 26, 2010
(04-26) 14:36 PDT LOS ANGELES (AP) —
A U.S. defense agency says contact with an experimental hypersonic glider was lost after it launched from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base last week.
The Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2 was launched atop a booster rocket on Thursday. It was supposed to separate and glide at many times the speed of sound to a splashdown near Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said Monday that the glider did separate and a preliminary review indicates it achieved controlled flight before telemetry was lost.
The agency says engineers are trying to determine what happened and where it came down.
The U.S. military is trying to develop technology to respond to threats around the globe at speeds of Mach 20 or greater.
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