United States Defense Department scientists plan to conduct a second test launch next year of the Falcon HTV-2 experimental super weapon, Press TV reported.
The first flight this year ended when the autopilot deliberately crashed the unmanned glider into the ocean as a safety measure.
The Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicle is designed to skim the top of the atmosphere just below space and is a key element of the Pentagon's Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPGS) capability -- a program to build non-nuclear strategic weapons that can strike conventionally anywhere in the world in less than an hour, the Washington Times reported on Friday.
The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has issued a statement saying that an independent engineering review board found that the first flight was terminated after the plane began to roll so violently that it "exceeded the available control capability" of the onboard autonomous piloting system.
The $308 million Falcon HTV-2 is a suborbital near-space vehicle launched on a Minotaur rocket, a solid-fuel booster built from a decommissioned ballistic missile.
On the very edge of the atmosphere, in a procedure called "clamshell payload fairing release," the launch missile deploys the plane, which is then supposed to glide above the Earth at more than 13,000 miles per hour (20,800 kilometers per hour), which is mach 16.9, or nearly 17 times the speed of sound.