In this paper an adaptive, disturbance-based sliding-mode controller for hypersonic entry vehicles is proposed. The scheme is based on high-order sliding-mode theory, and is coupled to an extended sliding-mode observer, able to reconstruct online the disturbances. The result is a numerically-stable control scheme, able to adapt online to reduce the error in presence of multiple uncertainties. The transformation of a highorder sliding-mode technique into an adaptive law by using the extended sliding-mode observer is, together with the multi-input, multi-output formulation for hypersonic entry vehicles, the main contribution of this paper. The robustness is veried with respect to perturbations in terms of initial conditions, atmospheric density variations, as well as mass and aerodynamic uncertainties. Results show that the approach is valid, leading to accurate disturbance reconstruction, to a better transient, and to good tracking performance, improved of about 50% in terms of altitude and range errors with respect to the corresponding standard sliding-mode control approach.