A NASA rocket carrying two hypersonic experiments this morning exploded shortly after take-off from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, the agency reports.
The Alliant Tech Systems ALV X-1 was carrying the HYBOLT experiment designed to "obtain unique high-speed flight data for fundamental boundary layer transition flow physics", plus the SOAREX payload which should have collected "data for atmospheric re-entry technology".
More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/22/nasa_rocket_failure/
HYBOLT: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/improvingflight/hybolt.html