The precooler heat exchanger is an essential SABRE element that cools the hot airstream generated by air entering the engine intake at hypersonic speed. Reaction Engines constructed the precooler test item in the UK, then shipped it to this specially constructed facility at the Colorado Air and Space Port in the US for its test campaign.
This ground-based test achieved the highest temperature objective of the company’s ‘HTX’ hot heat exchanger test programme: successfully quenching airflow temperatures in excess of 1000 °C in less than 1/20th of a second.