MOJAVE, Calif., Nov. 14, 2022 (Stratolaunch PR) — Stratolaunch, LLC is pleased to announce a contract with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to support the flight test of the company’s first expendable Talon-A hypersonic test vehicle, TA-1. Stratolaunch anticipates flying TA-1 in the first quarter of 2023.

MOJAVE, Calif. (Stratolaunch PR) — Stratolaunch announces the completion of its seventh flight test of Roc, the world’s largest flying aircraft. The aircraft flew for 3 hours and 1 minute over the Mojave Desert and reached an altitude of 27,000 feet (8200 meters), a new altitude record for the aircraft. 

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

MOJAVE, Calif. — Stratolaunch’s giant Roc aircraft’s sixth flight test ended more than two hours earlier than planned on Thursday due to an undisclosed problem.

MOJAVE, Calif. (Stratolaunch PR) — Stratolaunch is excited to announce the public debut of its structurally complete Talon-A test vehicle, TA-0, in this week’s issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology. This first Talon-A vehicle will be used to test and validate Roc’s release system and characterize the separation dynamics of the Talon vehicle. In addition to the first view of the vehicle by itself, the article also includes recent photos of the first mating of TA-0 to Roc’s pylon located on the center wing.

by David Bullock
Staff Writer

Parabolic Arc conducted a Q&A with Kimberly Slater, the Commercial and Science Space Lead at Draper Laboratory, about the guidance, navigational and control software she has worked on for Stratolaunch’s Talon-A hypersonic test vehicle.

Tell me a little about yourself, your engineer and career background and how you got to work for Draper.

Right now I currently lead our civil commercial science space work at Draper, but my history before Draper was all in human space flight. My engineering degree is in man machine interface design. And everything I did before Draper was building, developing, testing, and flying scientific experiments on the space shuttle and space station. So, I did everything from design and build to writing software, writing the interface training manuals to the software—the procedure that the astronauts use on orbit—and then I did crew training for both the American and Russian crew for both space station and shuttle and then mission support and then mission control centers in both Moscow and Houston to support the mission. You know that whole ‘Houston we have a problem’ question when things on orbit and any anomaly has happened during that real time fast paced mission support. 

MOJAVE, Calif. (Stratolaunch PR) — Stratolaunch announces the successful completion of its fifth flight test of Roc, the world’s largest flying aircraft. The aircraft flew for 4 hours and 58 minutes over the Mojave Desert and reached an altitude of 22,500 feet (6858 m). 

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

MOJAVE, Calif. — Stratolaunch’s Roc — the world’s largest airplane by wing span at 385 ft (117.3 m) — flew for the fourth time on Thursday. In a sign of just how complicated the massive air-launch platform is to fly, one of the main objectives of this flight test was to retract and lower the plane’s landing gear at altitude for the first time ever.

MOJAVE, Calif., January 16, 2022 (Stratolaunch PR) – Stratolaunch LLC is excited to announce the successful completion of its third Roc carrier aircraft test flight. Roc is the world’s largest aircraft, with a 385 ft. wingspan. The aircraft took off at 8:47 a.m. PST and flew for 4 hours, 23 minutes over the Mojave Desert. It reached an altitude of 23,500 feet (7162.8 m) at an indicated air speed of 180 knots. This flight further prepared the carrier aircraft to support launches of its upcoming hypersonic testbed vehicle, Talon-A.

MOJAVE, CA – December 8, 2021 – Stratolaunch, LLC is pleased to announce a research contract with the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). The company plans to augment existing Department of Defense flight test resources through affordable, commercially contracted, rapid-turnaround hypersonic flight testing for the Department of Defense and its prime contractor partners. “We’re excited to provide MDA with a threat-representative and threat-replicating target that allows them to understand how to […]

MOJAVE, Calif., November 1, 2021 (Stratolaunch PR) – Stratolaunch today announced that the Honorable Daniel Goldin, longest tenured National Aeronautics and Space Administration (“NASA”) Administrator, and Dr. Kamiar Karimi, former Senior Technical Fellow at the Boeing Company (“Boeing”), have joined its Board of Directors.