Group : Spaceships
Status : Under Development
Also Known As : Phantom Express
Origin : United States of America
Contractors : Boeing*, Aerojet Rocketdyne
Initial Operational Capability (IOC) : 2023
First Flight : 2020
Total Production : ?

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Experimental Spaceplane XS-1 is an unmanned hypersonic vehicle capable of Mach 10 that will lower satellite launch costs. The new spacecraft will be able to deliver payloads of up to 5,000-lb into space at $5 million and 10 times per year. The DARPA expects to award the first contracts in May 2014 and select a lead contractor in 2015. The new space launch system will use a reusable first stage capable of flying at hypersonic speeds at suborbital altitude carrying one or more expendable upper stages that would separate and deploy a satellite into low-Earth orbit. The reusable hypersonic vehicle would then return to Earth and land as a conventional aircraft. The US military plans to start flight testing the new XS-1 by late 2017 and complete the first sub-orbital flight in 2018. The DARPA also hopes the XS-1 to serve as some sort of reconnaissance satellite or hypersonic vehicle testbed.

The XS-1 Phantom Express is an experimental spaceplane to be designed, built and tested jointly between Boeing and DARPA. The new spaceplane to be lifted off by the Aerojet AR-22 rocket engine is an autonomous and reusable spacecraft capable of carrying and deploying a small upper stage to launch small satellites of up to 3,000-lb into low Earth Orbit (LEO). Once in space the XS-1 will deploy its second stage and return back to Earth flying like an aircraft. After landing the Phantom Express will be ready for its next flight utilizing maintenance procedures used on modern aircraft. The new spaceplane will feature third generation thermal protection. Boeing and DARPA agreed to cooperate on the XS-1 program in May 2017.