Hypersonic-U

Faculty and student researchers at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville have unveiled a prototype Mach 5 supersonic ramjet engine that they expect to test in flight next year from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s eastern shore. A two-stage rocket will carry the scramjet aloft, capping nearly five years of collaboration with NASA, the Department of Defense, and aerospace industry. The university’s engineering school is leading this work under the hypersonic scramjet program, or Hy-V. “The Hy-V program is very significant as it is the only current scramjet flight test program worldwide to include considerable levels of university student participation,” noted Christopher Goyne, aerospace engineering assistant professor and the project’s principal investigator. UVA’s wind tunnel is the only facility in the United States capable of simulating Mach 5 conditions for several hours at a time. The university recently partnered with Japan’s space agency as an extension of Hy-V. (See UVA Today release)