Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation-5b Flight Overview

The Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation (HIFiRE) program is a hypersonic flight-test program. The HIFiRE-5b flight flew in May 2016. The principle goal of this flight was to measure hypersonic boundary-layer transition on a three-dimensional body. The flight was fully successful, and measured leading edge, acreage, and centerline transition under supersonic and hypersonic conditions. This paper describes the HIFiRE-5b mission and some general conclusions derived from the experiment. This is one of five other companion papers that describe the experiment and postflight test and analysis in more detail.