The world's largest airplane – a Stratolaunch behemoth with two fuselages and six Boeing 747 engines – has made its first test flight in California, United States.
The mega jet carried out its maiden voyage over the Mojave desert on Saturday, 13 April.
It is designed to carry into space, and drop, a rocket that would in turn ignite to deploy satellites.
It is supposed to provide a more flexible way to deploy satellites than vertical takeoff rockets because this way all you need is a long runway for takeoff.
It was built by an engineering company called Scaled Composites.
The plane flew on Saturday for about two and a half hours, Stratolaunch said. Until now, it had just carried out tests on the ground.
It hit a top speed of 304 kilometers per hour (189 mph) and reached an altitude of 17,000 feet, or 5,182 meters.
“What a fantastic first flight. Today’s flight furthers our mission to provide a flexible alternative to ground launched systems.”Jean Floyd, CEO of Stratolaunch
Stratolaunch was financed by Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft as a way to get into the market for launching small satellites.
But Allen died in October last year and therefore, the future of the company is uncertain.
(Published in an arrangement with PTI)
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