NASA’s X-59 Quiet Supersonic Aircraft Prepares for First Flight

NASA’s X-59 Quiet Supersonic Aircraft Prepares for First Flight

NASA and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works recently unveiled the X-59 experimental aircraft, designed and built to reduce a loud sonic boom, associated with faster-than-sound flight, to a quiet sonic thump. The X-59 now moves closer to its first flight —a step toward making commercial supersonic flight over land a reality for everyone. Researchers on NASA’s Quesst mission will work to understand people’s reactions to the X-59’s thump and give that data to regulators, who will then consider writing new sound-based rules to lift the ban on commercial supersonic flight over land.

The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission that seeks to solve one of the major barriers to supersonic flight over land, currently banned in the United States, by making sonic booms quieter.

NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft is the product of decades of aeronautics and supersonic flight research. The X-59 is designed to be able to fly supersonic, or faster than the speed of sound, without producing a loud sonic boom, which occurs when aircraft fly at such speeds. Instead, the X-59 is designed to reduce that boom to a quieter sonic “thump.” 

The X-59's goal is to help change existing national and international aviation rules that ban commercial supersonic flight over land.

Learn more here:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission/quesst/

https://www.nasa.gov/flightlog

X-59 Free Maker Bundle (STEM Education):

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/x-59-maker-bundle-v8.pdf

Hablas español? Visita: https://ciencia.nasa.gov/el-x-59-se-asemeja-una-aeronave-real para aprender mas sobre la mision Quesst

 

Video Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Producers: Sami Aziz, Blair Allen

Editor: Ryan Darden

Color Grading: Ron Beard

Videographers: Lori Losey, Jacob Shaw, and Lockheed Martin

Duration: 1 minute

Release Date: Jan. 12, 2024

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