Two Up, Two Down

This is the second failed flight for the HTV-2, at $160 million per splash.

DARPA issues statement on failed flight of hypersonic aircraft

The Falcon launched at 7:45 a.m. from Vandenberg Air Force Base, northwest of Santa Barbara, into the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere aboard an eight-story Minotaur IV rocket, made by Orbital Sciences Corp.

After reaching an undisclosed sub-orbital altitude, the aircraft jettisoned from its protective cover atop the rocket, then nose-dived back toward Earth, leveled out and began to glide above the Pacific at 20 times the speed of sound, or Mach 20.

Then the trouble began.

“Here’s what we know,” said Air Force Maj. Chris Schulz, DARPA’s program manager. “We know how to boost the aircraft to near space. We know how to insert the aircraft into atmospheric hypersonic flight. We do not yet know how to achieve the desired control during the aerodynamic phase of flight. It’s vexing; I’m confident there is a solution. We have to find it.”

See also:
Pentagon’s hypersonic flight test cut short by anomaly
Pentagon’s Mach 20 Missile Lost Over Pacific — Again
DARPA drops another HTV-2
Second Flop: DARPA Loses Contact With HTV-2
DARPA Launches and Loses Hypersonic Aircraft: Update
The Air Force Loses a Second Superfast Spaceplane
Falcon HTV-2 is lost during bid to become fastest ever plane
Falcon hypersonic vehicle test flight fails
Review Board Sets Up to Probe HTV-2 L
DARPA loses contact with hypersonic aircraft
Lost at sea. Military loses contact with hypersonic test plane
Misdirection, Always Watch What The Left Hand Is Doing

So, in order to find out what went wrong, the Air Force needs to find this tiny HTV-2 drone, that they lost contact with, somewhere in the vast Pacific ocean. Good luck with that, they never lost the first one the dunked.

/why do I get the feeling there’s not going to be a third time?

Satellite In A Satellite

Unlike the recent Russian satellite failure, our satellites work like they’re supposed to.

NASA Solar Sail Satellite Ejects from Mothership in Space

A small NASA satellite carrying a folded-up solar sail ejected from its mothership in low-Earth orbit yesterday (Dec. 6), marking a key success in NASA’s efforts to develop and deploy solar-sail technology.

NanoSail-D, which is about the size of a loaf of bread, ejected from NASA’s washing-machine-sized FASTSAT satellite at 1:31 a.m. EST (0631 GMT) Monday.

NanoSail-D’s 100-square-foot sail is still folded up tight for now. It should unfurl in about two days, demonstrating a technology that NASA hopes will help bring decommissioned satellites down from Earth’s orbit without using up valuable propellant. The idea is to use radiation from the sun as a sort of wind pushing against a thin sail to propel the lightweight craft through space.

See also:
NASA’s Nanosail-D Released into the Winds of Space
NASA’s Nanosail-D satellite ejects into space
Miniature satellite ejected in space
NASA Launches Solar Sail Satellite, Hints at Future for Space Debris
Big satellite launches small one
NASA Launches Space Kite into Orbit
NASA launches first satellite from a satellite in Huntsville-controlled experiment
NanoSail-D
NanoSail-D
FASTSAT
FASTSAT
Marshall Space Flight Center
Marshall Space Flight Center

These mini-satellites are about the size of a loaf of bread? They must be pretty hard to keep track of from the ground.

/I bet this technology gets picked up by the military pretty quick