Aeroprobe and the Orbital X-34

One of our customers, Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Virginia, was the primary NASA contractor for the X-34 flight vehicle. The X-34, a single-engine rocket plane, was designed to fly itself using onboard computers. The vehicle design dimensions were approximately 58 feet long, 28 feet wide at wing tip and 11 feet tall from the bottom of the fuselage to the top of the tail.

Orbital has been utilizing our line of seven-hole probes beginning with the wind tunnel testing of the X-34. Orbital tested a 1/30 scale model of the X-34 and the L-1011 in the wind tunnel of Calspan Corp. The X-34 model was equipped with three custom designed seven-hole probes, one in the nose and two on the wing, as shown in the photographs.

Three-dimensional velocity data were sampled from the probes as the X-34 model was moved away from the L-1011 model, simulating the drop tests, scheduled to be conducted later.

In addition to the wind tunnel tests, Orbital also utilized a set of seven-hole probes on the full-scale drop test model. Three probes were again used at the same locations as the wind tunnel model. For these tests, the X-34 was mounted underneath the L-1011 and flown on "captive-carry" flights to allow the Federal Aviation Administration to approve modifications to the L-1011.

The X-34 launches from an L-1011 airliner and reaches altitudes of up to 250,000 feet and travel up to eight times faster than the speed of sound.