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Pegasus Launch Vehicle
DFRC Movie # Date Movie Description
EM-0024-01 1991 Pegasus air launch from B-52 and flight
EM-0024-02 August 12, 2003 Pegasus air launch from L-1011 and flight

The Pegasus® air-launched space booster was produced by Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Virginia, and Hercules Aerospace Company to provide small satellite users with a cost-effective, flexible, and reliable method for placing payloads into low-Earth orbit.

While at Dryden, Pegasus has been used to launch numerous satellites and research projects, and has also been developed for the Hyper-X and the PHYSX projects. The PHYSX experiment consists of a non-ablating, smooth glove installed on the first-stage delta wing of the Pegasus . The glove obtained data at speeds of up to Mach 8 and at altitudes approaching 200,000 feet.

The PHYSX flight experiment focused on determining where boundary-layer transition occurs on the glove and on identifying the flow mechanism causing transition from laminar to turbulent flow over the glove. Data from this flight-research effort include temperature, heat transfer and pressure measurements and trajectory reconstruction. Hypersonic flight-research programs are
an approach to validate design methods for hypersonic vehicles.

In preparation for some of the major hypersonic flight research programs, such as Hyper-X, NASA has capitalized on flight-research opportunities using the Pegasus launch vehicle to conduct aerodynamic experiments. By conducting more extensive experiments in a piggyback fashion on the Pegasus vehicle, some critical and secondary design and development
issues at hypersonic speeds can be addressed. Another purpose of the project includes the development of hypersonic flight instrumentation and test techniques.

The NASA B-52 launch vehicle is used to get the Pegasus airborne. The Pegasus Space Launch Vehicle has a 400 to 1000 pound payload capacity in a 61 cubic foot payload space at the front of the vehicle, capable of placing a payload into a low-earth orbit. Including payload, the vehicle has a gross weight of 41,000 pounds. It is 50 feet long and 50 inches in diameter.

Pegasus Hypersonic Experiment (PHYSX) Project Home Page


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