Footage appears to show large aircraft soaring over California

From a distance, it looks like a war plane imagined by Hayao Miyazaki, or the type of machine that could only exist in a science fiction novel.

But according to aviation enthusiasts who captured footage of it soaring in the California skies last week, it’s an experimental aircraft designed by Stratolaunch, an aerospace company located in the Mojave Desert. Chances are, residents in surrounding towns will see more of it, too. 

Described as the world’s largest flying aircraft, Roc — which looks like two 747s fused together and has a wingspan larger than a football field — recently completed a series of test flights last year, where it reached an altitude of 35,000 feet. Named after a large bird of prey from Arabian folklore, the unique composite aircraft has six engines, a 385-foot wingspan, and a takeoff weight of 1.3 million pounds. According to Stratolaunch’s website, the legendary bird was so large, it could carry elephants and transport sailors to safety. Similarly, it appears that the 21st-century iteration is designed to carry another Stratolaunch aircraft, the fully autonomous Talon-A2, which is capable of reaching hypersonic speeds when released into the air — that’s five times the speed of sound. 

Photos show the enormous plane taking off from the Mojave Air and Space Port at Rutan Field, an aerospace testing center in the high desert. First established in 1935 as a small, rural airport for silver and gold mining industries, by World War II, it became a gunnery training site for America’s “aces,” or most skilled fighter pilots. Today, it serves as a testing ground for more than 60 aerospace companies, its website says. 

“I am in awe of what this team has achieved,” Stratolaunch CEO Zachary Krevor said in a news release earlier this year. “We’ve executed four incredible Talon-A flights, completed twenty-four Roc flights to date, flew two new supersonic and hypersonic airplanes in a single year, and we are firmly on the path to making hypersonic flight test services a reality.”

Stratolaunch representatives did not respond to SFGATE’s request for more information by the time of publication.