Few aircraft look or sound quite like the legendary F-104 Starfighter. Built for extreme speed and altitude, the sleek, needle-nosed jet can exceed Mach 2 and climb rapidly into the stratosphere. Today, Starfighters Aerospace operates its fleet from Kennedy Space Center’s historic Shuttle Landing Facility, using the F-104 not simply as a piece of aviation history, but as a working supersonic research and flight-test platform. Starfighters has flown the aircraft in support of NASA research, aerospace technology testing and high-altitude experiments, and is developing the F-104 as an airborne launch platform capable of carrying research payloads and small launch vehicles toward the edge of space. You’ll see one of these remarkable aircraft will take to the skies demonstrating a machine whose story spans the golden age of supersonic flight and the emerging future of commercial spaceflight.
