Tag: X-59

NASA’s X-59 Supersonic Aircraft Will Fly This Year

Aviation International News reported NASA confirmed that the X-59 supersonic aircraft “will fly this year and be tested over about a nine-month period with initial trials proving performance and safety. Once concluded, Lockheed Martin will formally hand over the aircraft to NASA, a milestone anticipated in 2024.” NASA said that the “program will then enter ‘Phase 2’ under which NASA flies the aircraft within the supersonic test range over NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center and Edwards Air Force Base in California to prove that the supersonic technology works as designed and that the aircraft is safe for operations in the National Airspace System. The third phase of the program is set to kick off in 2025 and run through 2026, involving flight trials over several U.S. cities. This is when the data collection will occur.”
Full Story (Aviation International News)

NASA, Lockheed Expect X-59 Quesst Aircraft to Make First Flight This Year

FlightGlobal reported that NASA “now expects its delayed X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology (Quesst) demonstrator aircraft will make first flight in 2023 following completion of still-outstanding system evaluations.” The government agency, with partner Lockheed Martin, “confirm the 2023 first-flight target.” However, one industry advocacy group is calling on NASA to review the X-59 program “on ground that its conflicts with the US government’s goal of reducing aviation’s carbon footprint.”
Full Story (FlightGlobal)

NASA’s X-59 Plane to Break the Sound Barrier with No Sonic Boom

CNET News reports that NASA’s X-59 plane is attempting to break the sound barrier without the usual accompaniment of a sonic boom. At the Armstrong Flight Research Center, just outside of Lancaster, California, the space agency “is working on the X-59 QueSST (short for Quiet SuperSonic Technology) airplane – a demonstrator aircraft designed to fly faster than the speed of sound generating nothing more than a ‘sonic thump.’” Traditional supersonic aircraft “can create a sonic boom in excess of 100 decibels during flight – a problem that led the US Federal Aviation Administration to ban commercial supersonic flight over land in 1973.” But the X-59 “has been shaped to minimize the shock waves that cause a sonic boom midflight, reducing its sound at ground level to 75 decibels.”
Full Story (CNET News)

Supersonic Passenger Flights May Return

CNET News reports that a few companies are considering bringing back supersonic passenger flights. In 2021, United Airlines “agreed to buy 15 aircraft from Boom Supersonic, a startup working to build supersonic commercial jets. United is aiming to get those planes in the air by 2029.” Virgin Galactic and Rolls-Royce announced a partnership in 2020 to develop the X-59 aircraft, a quieter supersonic jet.
Full Story (CNET News)

Lockheed Martin Releases Video on NASA X-59 Supersonic Jet

SPACE reports on a video released on YouTube by Lockheed Martin about “NASA’s new X-59 supersonic jet” in which engineers “talked about the work of the forthcoming quiet supersonic flyer.” The video “opens with an incredible timelapse showing the jet coming together within view of a large team of technicians, seeking to make supersonic flight more silent than ever before.” NASA hopes to test the jet “over several communities in the United States starting in 2024.”
Full Story (SPACE)
 
 
 

 

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Supersonic X-59 Continues to Progress in CA

X-59 Supersonic Aircraft Arrives at Palmdale for Assembly

SPACE reports that NASA’s new “X-59 supersonic jet arrived this month at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale for assembly, ahead of a flight test expected this year.” NASA said April 18, “With its return to California, the X-59 will undergo further ground tests as it approaches full completion of its development and continues to make progress on its way to first flight.”
Full Story (SPACE)