The hypersonic test vehicle BOLT-1B has conducted a successful flight in northern Norway.
The term hypersonic refer to travelling through the atmosphere at speeds greater than Mach 5, which will introduce new challenges for engineers such as intense aerodynamic heating, material durability as well as new airflow challenges.
– The BOLT-1B mission is designed to look more detailed into airflow, says Thomas Gansmoe, Director of Sounding rockets and Engineering services at Andøya Space Sub-Orbital. – More specifically how the mechanisms work at hypersonic speeds when going from laminar flow to turbulent flow on specific parts of the flight vehicle’s surface.
BOLT-1B is a project coordinated by the Air Force Office og Scientific Research from USA and is carried out by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), the Air Force Research Laboratory Aerospace Systems Directorate (AFRL/RQ), and the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
Principal investigator is Dr. Brad Wheaton from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).
The test vehicle lifted off from the Andøya Space Sub-Orbital launch site at Sept 2nd, 2024, 11:41:01 local time and reached an apogee of 254 kilometers before safely splashing down inside the impact and dispersion area. BOLT-1B completed all test objectives, and the launch team now has a lot of data to analyze in the months ahead.
– Andøya Space Sub-Orbital is proud to have supported the BOLT-1B launch campaign, says Thomas Gansmoe, Director of Sounding rockets and Engineering services at Andøya Space Sub-Orbital. – We wish to congratulate the entire team with a highly successful and important test campaign. The effects of boundary layer transition are some of the greatest uncertainty sources for designing a hypersonic vehicle. The data gathered from this flight will help engineers design future hypersonic vehicles, Gansmoe finishes.