NASA and Lockheed Martin have eventually took the wraps of X-59a “quiet supersonic” aircraft that could shape the future of both military and civilian air travel.
The X-59 has been under development at the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works for years, following a $248 million grant from NASA in 2018. This was just the first of many research projects NASA aimed to fund in order to take bold steps advances in aviation, whether in speed, efficiency or size.
Until now the aircraft has only been seen in various stages of disassembly in the hangar. Today marks the first time it’s hit the tarmac in public view, and of course they’ve had plenty going on at Lockheed’s Palmdale facility.
“In just a few years we have gone from an ambitious idea to reality. NASA’s X-59 will help change the way we travel, bringing us closer together in much less time,” Pam Melroy, NASA’s deputy administrator, said in a press release. (A press call is scheduled for later today, and this article may be updated soon to reflect the comments made on it.)
The X-59 is an experimental aircraft, not a prototype of a production aircraft. The purpose is to prove that an airplane can fly faster than the speed of sound—in this case, 925 MPH—without creating the window-rattling sonic boom that results from the resulting pressure wave.
While it is impossible to fully mitigate the impact of a large body moving through the atmosphere at high speed, the team aims to reduce the blast to a “sonic boom” that is less disruptive to people, infrastructure and wildlife.
Schlieren image of a model X-59 producing a dissipative pressure wave at Mach speed. Image Credits: NASA
“By demonstrating the possibility of quiet commercial supersonic travel on land, we seek to open new commercial markets for American companies and benefit travelers around the world,” said NASA’s Bob Pearce.
It pretty much achieves this with its incredibly aerodynamic shape: Nearly 100 feet long and just 29.5 feet wide, it has a dart-like profile carefully designed to break up the shock waves that come off it in flight.
An interesting consequence of this shape is that having a forward-facing cockpit window is impractical — like the nose, it would have to be very attenuated. So the team instead installed a 4K display it calls the External Visibility System, or XVS, which relays images from the front in real time.
The plane has not taken off yet, because there are many more tests before that happens. But now that they’ve got weight on the wheels, they can move on to “integrated systems tests, engine revs and taxi tests” ahead of its first flight, tentatively scheduled for “later this year.” A subsonic flight is planned, then more tests and then the crucial first supersonic flight.
Others besides NASA and Lockheed are interested in this kind of flight, of course: Boom Supersonic is working hard to get its own quiet supersonic test plane out there. Just don’t expect to hear any beeps anytime soon — the technology is promising for many reasons, but it’s still years away from mainstream use.
