Japan on Monday successfully tested a revolutionary design for a supersonic airliner to replace Concorde, three years after the first attempt ended in a fiery crash in the Australian desert, officials said.
A scale model of an airliner that would carry 300 passengers at twice the speed of sound was launched from the Woomera test site in the outback with the aid of a rocket shortly after dawn, Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said.
In the test, the 11.5-metre (38-foot) scale model of the 104-metre airliner separated from the rocket at around 18,000 metres (59,400 feet) and glided at Mach 2 (2,450 kilometres per hour, 1,522 miles per hour) for about 15 minutes.
The multi-million dollar test aircraft landed safely by parachute, Onodera said.
In the first attempt at Woomera in July 2002, the rocket carrying the scale model veered wildly out of control a few seconds after takeoff and crashed in flames.
"The scaled experimental supersonic transport test has finished successfully," Kimio Sakata, director of the flight trial operation at JAXA told a news conference linked to Tokyo from Woomera.
The aircraft could cut hours off inter-continental travel, halving the flight time between Tokyo and New York.
Monday's test launch cost roughly 111 million dollars and many times that amount will have to be spent before commercialisation, according to a JAXA official.
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