Capt. Charles “Chuck” Yeager becomes the first pilot to reach supersonic speeds in level flight when he reaches a speed of Mach 1.06 (700 miles per hour) at an altitude of 45,000 feet in the rocket-powered Bell XS-1 (later redesignated X-1) over Muroc Dry Lake, Calif. His aircraft was released by a B-29 mother ship in midair.
Facing competition from fast-growing startups, Lockheed Martin is speeding up production of an “affordable, scalable” hypersonic glide body, dubbed the Next Generation Glide Body, the firm said in a June 24 release.