Ed Warnock, CEO of the Perlan Project, a nonprofit research group that designs and flies gliders at extremely high altitudes, said his team is excited the flight was successful.

The glider, which was piloted by Morgan Sandercock and Jim Payne, reached the height of 5,000 feet above Oregon’s Redmond Municipal Airport. Next year’s flights are expected to reach 90,000 ft/27,432m, exceeding even the altitudes achieved by the U-2 and the SR-71.

The aircraft was invited to operate at the edge of space where the air density is “less than two percent of what it is at sea level”, while carrying a crew of two and instruments that will “provide new insight into climate change and our upper atmosphere”.

“We are asked to sponsor all kinds of things but we were drawn to this by its daring, the imagination involved in actually flying a glider to the boundary of space, and the fact that they knew what they were talking about”, McArtor said of Airbus’ decision to invest in the project.

If successful, this will not only smash the current glider world record altitude of 50,727 ft (15,460 m) set by Perlan II’s predecessor, Perlan Mission I, in 2006 with Steve Fossett and Einar Enevoldson at the controls, but it will also beat the SR-71’s current record-holding altitude of 85,069 ft (25,929 m).

In certain regions, especially mountainous regions like Argentina, and the north and south poles, the plane can reach the stratosphere. The mission will offer insights into how aircraft might operate in the thin atmosphere of Mars and at temperatures as low as minus 70 degrees Celsius.

To make this possible, the aircraft is pressurized and needs to be piloted by crews who will breathe pure oxygen through a rebreather system, which is similar to the breathing technology that astronauts use in space. As such, there’s no intention for the Glider to be used for commercial flying, since the aircraft is already very sensitive to weather conditions and air currents.

The designers of the glider hope that Perlan 2 will eventually make it to 90,000 feet – essentially the edge of space – by catching “stratospheric mountain waves” – air waves that extend into the stratosphere. The Perlan 1 aircraft is on display at the Seattle Museum of Flight. The aircraft will require new transonic wings because of high flight speeds. “This marks a major breakthrough in aviation innovation, one that will allow winged exploration of the atmosphere at the edge of space and lead to new discoveries to unravel some of the continuing mysteries of weather, climate change and ozone depletion”.