PREVIEW

NASA and Lockheed Martin’s revolutionary X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft made its formal debut on Friday 12 January 2024. The one-of-a-kind experimental plane will allow NASA to gather data that could revolutionise air travel as we know it - potentially starting a new era of supersonic commercial air travel. The aim of the X-59 project, part of NASA’s Quesst mission, is to prove supersonic flight can be undertaken unobtrusively enough to allow the reconsideration of regulations preventing commercial supersonic aircraft from flying at such speeds over land. For 50 years, the U.S. and other nations have prohibited such flights because of the disturbance caused by loud, startling sonic booms on people living below. The X-59 is expected to fly at 1.4 times the speed of sound, or 925 mph. Its design, shaping and technologies will allow the aircraft to achieve these speeds while generating a quieter sonic ‘thump’ instead of the ‘boom’ associated with previous generations of craft like Concorde. The unique experimental airplane is 99.7 feet long and 29.5 feet wide with a thin, tapered nose to break up the shock waves that would ordinarily result in a supersonic aircraft causing a sonic boom. The X-59 is expected to make its first test flight later this year and will then fly over selected cities at supersonic speeds to test the impact of its ‘sonic thump’ on residents.