Not a rocket. Not a jet. A scramjet. NASA’s X-43A used supersonic combustion to breathe air at hypersonic speed — no onboard oxygen like rockets. Dropped from a B-52. Boosted by a rocket. Then its scramjet ignited at 100,000 ft. Top speed: Mach 9.6 (~7,000 mph). Still one of the fastest air-breathing aircraft ever flown. A small test vehicle that changed the future of hypersonic flight forever. 🎥 Source: NASA Hyper-X / X-43A test program #NASA #Hypersonic #Scramjet #AerospaceEngineering #Aviati