NASA and ATK to Launch Suborbital Hypersonic Experiments...

Two NASA hypersonic experiment payloads are scheduled for launch no earlier than Aug. 21 from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia atop a two-stage suborbital rocket developed by Alliant Techsystems, also known as ATK, of Salt Lake City.

Scheduled between 5:10 and 6:10 a.m. on Aug. 21, this launch may be visible in the mid-Atlantic area. The backup launch days are August 22 through 25. The launch time for the backup days is between 3 to 6:10 a.m.

This launch will mark the only flight of ATK's developmental ALV-X1 rocket, which will loft NASA's Hypersonic Boundary Layer Transition, or HYBOLT, and Sub-Orbital Aerodynamic Re-entry Experiment, or SOAREX, payloads.

The 55-foot tall ALV-X1 will fly about 1,000 miles downrange, to a point southeast of Wallops, where it and the experiments will fall into the Atlantic Ocean.

For text updates on the countdown status on the day of the launch, go to:

http://sites.wff.nasa.gov/webcast

For more information about NASA's aeronautics research, go to:

http://aeronautics.nasa.gov

Source: http://www.nasa.gov