NASA prepares X-59 quiet supersonic jet for second critical flight test

NASA is planning to perform the second test flight of its X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft on Friday. The aircraft, built by Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, performed its first flight in October.

For the second flight, the X-59 will taxi from its hangar at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, then take off and land at nearby Edwards Air Force Base in California. The aircraft will fly for roughly an hour, reaching a cruising speed of 230 mph at 12,000 feet before accelerating to 260 mph at 20,000 feet.

This flight will kick off a series of flights known as envelope expansion, during which NASA will gradually take the X-59 faster and higher to ensure the aircraft’s safety and assess its performance. This phase will be followed by flights assessing the X-59’s unique acoustic profile.

The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission and was developed to fly supersonic, or faster than the speed of sound, without generating a loud sonic boom.

Through Quesst, NASA is working to make commercial supersonic flight over land possible, thereby dramatically reducing travel time in the United States and around the world.

Overcoming the Sonic Barrier

Since the retirement of the Concorde and regulatory actions taken worldwide in the early 1970s, supersonic flights have been restricted over land due to the intense pressure wave created when an aircraft exceeds the speed of sound—the deafening noise commonly known as the sonic boom. This restriction effectively strangled the viability of supersonic commercial air travel. The X-59 is designed specifically to mitigate this issue.