Flexible, High-Cadence, Low-Cost, Hypersonic Launch Platform

SDA's Tracking Layer currently has limited opportunities to test tracking constellation capabilities using hypersonic targets flying real mission scenarios. There are only a handful of such flight tests each year and even fewer actual threat flights to observe. Providing an advantage to the US warfighter requires SDA assets to track launches and predict trajectories that include a wide array of threat types. These threats fly vastly difference trajectories, propulsion systems and thermal protection systems, each presenting a different thermal radiance spectra and intensity that varies with time. Fenix Space, Inc. proposes a launch platform in an innovative architecture that provides a high-cadence, low-cost hypersonic target capability with the flexibility to fly: (a) trajectories with widely varying speeds, altitudes, and flight paths; (b) different propulsion types including cryogenic O2/CH4, liquid oxygen/kerosene, storable liquid combinations, hybrid and solid propellants; and (c) various thermal protection systems. Additionally, hypersonic flight targets can be tested with an array of other subsystems, such as alternate telemetry, on board. The Fenix Space, Inc. target flights serve as "training missions" for SDA Tracking Layer assets, exercising sensors arrays, data processing, in-space communications systems and space-to-ground communications. Fenix proposes a launch platform for hypersonic testing that flies tests at cadences up to one per day, if desired, at costs of 1/100 to 1/20 current flight test methods. SDA assets also have the potential to provide hypersonic flight test range services at much lower cost than the current solution of arraying USN ships all along the flight path. The Fenix Space, Inc. hypersonic flight test solution is an air tow launch platform that is very agile, able to operate out of existing airfield infrastructure rather than dedicated ground launch sites. The combination of SDA orbital tracking and telemetry capabilities with the Fenix flexible, agile hypersonic flight test capability is synergistic in that tests can be flown in locations previously too challenging to consider, and at the desired cadence, a critical DoD need.