Aircraft Fleet 2000s Photo Gallery Contact Sheet

As the 21st century dawned, space-related activities at Dryden continued to expand. The X-38 continued to make research flights. The X-40A made glide flights at Dryden after being dropped from a CH-46 helicopter. The X-40A’s free flight and landing tests were being conducted as part of NASA’s X-37 program, intended to reduce the risk of flight testing the X-37 experimental re-entry vehicle. The X-37 will enable NASA to test advanced technologies in the harsh environment of space and in returning through Earth’s atmosphere. The X-40A is an 85 percent scale version of the X-37. Another space-related project was the X-43A, the flight research vehicle for the Hyper-X project to test a supersonic ramjet (scramjet) engine at speeds of Mach 7 and Mach 10. The X-43A was scheduled to be boosted to the test speed my a Pegasus booster launched from a B-52. It would then separate and its engine would operate for a very short period to provide data for further development of airbreathing scramjet technology.