A British-designed jet engine that flies at eight times the speed of sound has been successfully tested in Australia. The 5000mph “scramjet” developed by British company QinetiQ could cut journey times between London and Sydney to just two hours.

It was testing a revolutionary scramjet engine designed by Qinetiq, formerly the UK government’s defence research agency. Scientists hope that the scramjet could allow super-fast intercontinental travel in the future. An international team of researchers is now analysing data from the experiment.

“Ultimately we hope to be able to use it to launch satellites into low-Earth orbit,” Professor Allan Paull of the University of Queensland’s centre for hypersonics told the Sunday Times. The scientists had only six seconds to monitor the jet’s performance before the £1 million engine crashed into the ground, after reaching a height of 314km.

A scramjet - short for supersonic combustion ramjet - has no moving parts and takes the oxygen it needs to burn hydrogen fuel from the air. It is therefore more efficient than conventional rocket engines as it does not need to carry an extra oxygen supply.

Scramjets, however, do not begin to work until after it reaches five times the speed of sound when air passing through the engine is compressed and hot enough for ignition to happen. The test in Australia was the first of three flights planned for this year by the international Hyshot consortium.

Another Hyshot engine designed by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) will be next, followed in June by an engine capable of reaching Mach 10 designed by the Australian Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO).

The success of the weekend’s test spurred researchers from the University of Queensland to run a second scramjet test in South Australia this week. Scramjets were first tested in 2001, but the trial failed as the rocket carrying the engine flew off course.

Project boss, Allan Paul, of the University of Queensland, hopes that within ten years scramjet planes will be delivering organs for transplant operations. The fastest plane now in the air is the US Air Force’s SR-71 Blackbird, going at 3.2 times the speed of sound.

• Thomson to slash commission to 7%
• Steve Irwin Dead after diving accident
• Space tourism is on the Horizon
• Weekend trip to Ingleton Falls

Keep up-to-date by subscribing to our weekly newsletter or RSS feed