The world's largest aircraft lifted off for the first time with a hypersonic prototype TA-0, flying for five hours

Stratolaunch Roc, the world's largest catamaran, launched a hypersonic prototype TA-0 for the first time on October 28, local time. The test confirmed that the plane could carry a hypersonic aircraft, a step closer to dropping the TA-0 at high altitude.

It is reported that the Roc catamaran, owned by aircraft manufacturer Stratolaunch, is the largest aircraft in the world, with a wingspan of 117m, larger than a football field. It carried a test aircraft and successfully completed its flight test over the Mojave Desert in California on Friday. "this is the first integrated flight test of the Talon launch system," said Brandon Wood (Brandon Wood), vice president of projects and operations at Stratolaunch. "We will start from here to conduct more complex and efficient flights around the hypersonic vehicle test platform."

On the same day, engineers connected the TA-0 to a bracket in the center of the wing of the giant plane Roc, which took off from Mojave Aerospace Port with a 28-foot-long (8.5m) Talon prototype. The company said the flight lasted more than five hours, with a maximum altitude of 23000 feet (7000 meters), and all goals were achieved in the test.

"I was ecstatic to see these two planes leaving the runway and flying into the sky together," said Zakary Zachary Krevor, chief executive and president of Stratolaunch. "seeing our flight products flying together shows that we have taken an important step towards reusable hypersonic conventional flight."

Stratolaunch was founded in 2011 by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen (Paul Allen). Roc completed its first test flight in April 2019, six months after Allen died in 2018. Later that year, Stratolaunch was acquired by Cerberus Capital Management and Roc was transformed into an air launch platform for hypersonic aircraft.

Stratolaunch is developing a series of Talon aircraft capable of flying at speeds up to six times the speed of sound. The flight test carrying the TA-0 prototype on Friday was the eighth flight of the Stratolaunch Roc, but launched for the first time as a vehicle.

If the TA-0 prototype is successfully tested in December, Stratolaunch plans to test the first hypersonic aircraft, the TA-1, in 2023. At the same time, the company is building fully reusable hypersonic aircraft TA-2 and TA-3.

"the company expects to provide hypersonic flight services to customers in 2023," Stratolaunch representatives wrote in a statement.