Hypersonic vehicles have been around for some time, with many spaceplanes and experimental aircraft having exceeded Mach 5. There has been a recent resurgence of interest in hypersonic flight and there are now approximately 40 hypersonic craft proposed or in development around the world. This includes spaceplanes, experimental craft, technology test beds, passenger craft, and weapons.
While the advantages of hypersonic craft are obvious (whether it’s traveling from London to New York in an hour or having advanced strike weapons), developing and testing such vehicles is extremely difficult. Flight testing hypersonic vehicles often face many additional challenges compared to sub or supersonic aircraft test including:
- Extreme environmental conditions
- Limited available space and weight
- High data rates and collecting data from new sensors
- Telemetry challenges resulting from high speeds
- Data security
Curtiss-Wright has built up an extensive knowledge base of deploying solutions in harsh environments like space and for hypersonic vehicles. Products we offer include:
- Data acquisition systems
- Space data acquisition systems
- Transponders and transmitters, and flight termination receivers
- Recorders
- Network switches
- High speed and IP cameras
- IP‐transceivers
- IADS Display and analysis software
- Flight safety products
Our flight test instrumentation (FTI) solutions’ have proven reliability in hypersonic applications and are highly flexible to meet the varying needs of each program. This is all backed up by the industry leading system solution architects and 24/7 support experts to further reduce the risks of costly downtime and to help our partners achieve success as smoothly as possible.