Japan's space agency plans to test flight a supersonic airplane at twice the speed of sound high over the Australian outback next month. Japan expects that the airplane will lead to the development of a successor to Concorde.

A JAXA photo of a supersonic aircraft, piggybacked on a rocket

The test flight will come three years after the first experimental flight of the unmanned aircraft prematurely separated from its booster rocket and crashed into the desert.

"We've made some improvements so that won't happen again," Takaaki Akuto, a spokesman for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), was reported to have in Tokyo. "This is a pretty important test."

If the test is successful, it will progress the development of a plane that would carry 300 passengers at Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound, making a trip from Tokyo to Los Angeles in about four hours. It will also bolster a June 2005 agreement between Japan and France to jointly research such a plane over the next three years.

JAXA plans to launch the experimental craft, piggybacked on a rocket, at Australia's Woomera test range, Akuto said. The rocket will carry the plane to an altitude of 12.4 miles before releasing it at a speed of Mach 2 to collect information about the plane's aerodynamics. The craft will float back to earth by parachute after the 15 minute flight.

The Kyodo News Agency has reported that if the 1.1 billion yen ($10 million) experiment works, JAXA plans to follow up with similar tests of a jet-powered craft.

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