Destinus Achieves First Flight with Hydrogen Afterburner To Advance Plans for Hypersonic Aircraft
The company's Jungfrau technology demonstrator made several flights last week from an airport in Germany using its new hydrogen-burning afterburner system.
Destinus, the European start-up developing a hydrogen-powered hypersonic aircraft, has flown its Jungfrau subscale technology demonstrator drone using new hydrogen afterburners. The company said that multiple flights conducted at an undisclosed airport near Munich on May 24 marked the world’s first inflight deployment of hydrogen afterburner technology.
The Destinus engineering team developed the afterburner in-house and then integrated it with an existing jet turbine engine. As used on multiple fighter aircraft, afterburners are additional combustion units that generate higher levels of thrust by injecting more fuel—in this case, gaseous hydrogen—into the exhaust stream to support higher speeds and climb rates.
