🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Sometimes the latest and most exciting achievements in technology appear hard to believe, with stories on the staggering advancements in artificial intelligence pushing the limit of what many believe engineering can be capable of.
A similarly astonishing story in tech capability captured attention on social media this week, with a video purportedly showing a hypersonic sled firing at close to 6,600 mph.
The question was whether it was too astonishing to believe.
The Claim
A Reddit post, published on October 24, 2023, that was upvoted 8,800 times, includes a video with the heading "Hypersonic sled test / 6.599 mph / Holloman Air Force Base."
The video shows a rail track, that appears to be in a tunnel, facing toward a small dot of light in the distance. A loud bang can be heard as a bright plume of smoke and sparks appears on the right side of the track. The video is then played at 1/2 and 1/4 speed.
A slide at the end of the clip states "AIR FORCE TEST CENTER."
The Facts
Whatever is in the video is almost impossible to see even when the speed is reduced to a quarter of its speed.
As it turns out, while the footage is now four years old, it is, in fact, a recording of a hypersonic sled moving at the speed described in the Reddit post.
The story was widely reported in September 2019 by outlets including CNN and HuffPost.
The video was posted in May 2019 on the website of the Air Force Test Center, part of the United States Air Force. It states the footage was shot at the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.
"This was a hypersonic test that traveled Mach 8.6, which is 6,599 mph which is over one mile a second," it stated.
As described elsewhere on the site, the Holloman High-Speed Test Track is a "10-mile long, precision-aligned track" that has been used to test rocket sleds. These sleds, are described by the Air Force "critical to bridging the gap between the laboratory and full-scale flight tests for weapon systems under development."
In 2022, the 846th Test Squadron at the base was able to successfully stop a sled that was traveling at 6,400 feet, or 1.2 mile, per second on a monorail, meaning the sleds can be recovered for further test analysis.
The Ruling
True.
The video did record a "hypersonic sled" traveling at nealry 6,600 mph, albeit four years ago.
The footage was captured at the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, in 2019. The sleds are used to simulate flight tests for weapon systems.
FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team
About the writer
Tom Norton is Newsweek's Fact Check reporter, based in London. His focus is reporting on misinformation and misleading information in ... Read more