Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne announced Thursday it has completed testing of its hypersonic Ground Demonstrator Engine No. 2 at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.
This is the first time that a closed-loop hydrocarbon-fueled scramjet propulsion system has been successfully tested at hypersonic conditions.
The PWR GDE-2 produced significant hypersonic data results during several test runs conducted at Mach 5 conditions in the eight-foot High Temperature Tunnel at Langley. The engine used standard JP-7 fuel in a closed-loop configuration to both cool the engine hardware and fuel its combustor.
"Completing the testing of GDE-2 marks a significant milestone in hypersonic technology," said Mike McKeon, manager of hypersonic programs for PWR.
"GDE-2 is a complete propulsion system that contains many of the technologies required to make real world hypersonic propulsion a reality."
Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne teamed with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and NASA to complete the testing of GDE-2.
A government/industry team that includes AFRL, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, NASA, PWR and Boeing will use technology demonstrated by GDE-2 to develop the propulsion system for the X-51A flight demonstration program, which will begin flight testing in 2008.
