HUNTSVILLE — Mach 5 is the name of the car in the “Speed Racer” anime series.
It’s also the target speed of a ground-breaking UAS project by a pair of Huntsville companies.
Cummings Aerospace and ATRX have signed an agreement to integrate ATRX’s high-speed turbo-rocket onto a proven airframe from Cummings Aerospace with the goal of developing an affordable UAS that can fly at supersonic and hypersonic speeds.
“Huntsville has a talented and capable space-focused workforce, and we plan to draw on their abilities to help this city become the hypersonic and spaceplane manufacturing capital of the world,” said ATRX CEO Felix Bustos III.
The companies plan to integrate the ATR engine into Cummings Aerospace’s Hellhound variant designed for high-speed flight and begin subsonic and supersonic flight testing.
“The modern battlefield demands systems that are capable of flying faster and further into contested airspace,” said Sheila Cummings, CEO of Cummings Aerospace. “This partnership with ATRX will allow us to develop ATR-powered UAS that can offer both of these characteristics in a single vehicle, at an affordable price.”
The Hellhound is a versatile unmanned aircraft that is affordable, thanks to its 3D-printed modular design and commercial off-the-shelf hardware. Its rapid payload swaps in fewer than five minutes, with no tools required.
For this partnership, Cummings Aerospace will develop a new version designed to accommodate a hypersonic-capable engine.
“Cummings Aerospace is the perfect partner, considering the impressive work they’ve already done for the U.S. DoD,” said Bustos. “We’re excited about this partnership because it will significantly simplify flight testing of our ATR engines. Being able to validate the performance of our ATRs using a bespoke UAS based on a flight-proven airframe will de-risk and accelerate our spaceplane development efforts.
“Spaceplanes are very much needed with more than 50,000, mostly commercial, satellites that need to be launched into orbit in the next few years.”
ATRX’s Air Turbo Rocket (ATR) is a high-speed, air-breathing propulsion system capable of flying at hypersonic speeds, 5 times the speed of sound. The system has undergone multiple prototype tests, the company said.
Cummings Aerospace, a Native American Woman-Owned Small Business, is an aerospace engineering company delivering responsible weapon system solutions for defense modernization and readiness.
ATRX is developing space planes for low-cost on-demand space launch applications such as launching satellites to Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO), Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and other orbits.
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