There is a need to determine the equations of state of materials in regimes of extreme high pressures, temperatures and strain rates that are not attainable on current two-stage light-gas guns. Understanding high-pressure material behavior is crucial to address the physical processes associated with a variety of hypervelocity impact events related to space sciencesorbital-debris impact, debris-shield designs, high-speed plasma propagation, and impact lethality applications. At very high impact velocities material properties will be dominated by phase-changes, such as melting or vaporization, which cannot be achieved at lower impact velocities. Development of well-controlled and repeatable hypervelocity launch capabilities is the first step necessary to improve our understanding of material behavior at extreme pressures and temperatures not currently available wing conventional two-stage light-gas gun techniques. In this paper, techniques that have been xsed to extend both the launch capabilities of a two-stage light gas gun to 16 km/s, and their use La determine the material properties at pressures and temperature states higher than those ever obtained in the laboratory are summarized. The newly developed hypervelocity launcher (HVL) can launch intact (macroscopic dimensions) plates to 16 km/s. Time-resolved interferometric techniques have been used to determine shock-loadinghelease characteristics of materials impacted by such fliers as well as shock-induced vaporization phenomena in fully vaporized states. High-speed photography or radiography has been used to evaluate the debris propagation characteristics resulting from disc impact of thin bumper sheets at hypervelocities in excess of 10 Ws using the HVL. Examples of these experiments are provided in this paper
