Stratolaunch completes reusable autonomous Hypersonic flight with Talon-A2

Californian company Stratolaunch has completed its second hypersonic flight and recovery with the Talon-A2 (TA-2) fully autonomous vehicle. This took place in March and follows successful first hypersonic flight of Talon-A2 in December 2024 and confirmed the reusability of the vehicle. The TA-2 surpassed Mach 5 for the second time, exceeding the speed of the December flight.

In both tests, the TA-2 hypersonic vehicle launched from the Roc carrier aircraft, flew over the Pacific Ocean and achieved speeds greater than Mach 5 before landing at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, according to the US Department of Defense.

 “With the data collected from this second flight, we are able to apply lessons learned to enhance the strength and performance of the Talon-A vehicles,” according to a statement by Stratolaunch. “While the team needs to complete its data review of flight two, the first flight review confirmed the robustness of the Talon-A design while demonstrating the ability to meet the full range of performance capabilities desired by our customers.”

Stratolaunch has now demonstrated hypersonic speed, added the complexity of a full runway landing with prompt payload recovery, and proven reusability, the company says.

The company is focused on expanding its hypersonic flight testing and ensuring the long-term sustainability of reusable hypersonic testbeds. These completed flights demonstrate the US’s return to reusable hypersonic flight test since the X-15 flight test program ended in 1968.

Stratolaunch performed the flights for the US Department of Defense’s Test Resource Management Center (TRMC) Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed (MACH-TB) program under a partnership with Leidos. The MACH-TB program is designed to accelerate delivery of advanced hypersonic capabilities to the warfighter by providing DoD, other US Federal agencies, industry, and academia the ability to affordably and rapidly conduct hypersonic experiments and test all commercially available hypersonic system components.

“Demonstrating the reuse of fully recoverable hypersonic test vehicles is an important milestone for MACH-TB,” stated George Rumford, Director of the TRMC. “Lessons learned from this test campaign will help us reduce vehicle turnaround time from months down to weeks.”