The Supersonic X-59 Jet takes off over the California Desert on its first test flight
By Steve Gorman
PALMDALE, Calif. (Reuters) – ASA’s X-59 jet is supersonic – but quietly swept across the Southern California desert on Tuesday in the first low-noise flight, revealing the path to faster air travel.
The spectacular plane, built for NASA by aerospace contractor Lockheed Martin, took off an hour after sunrise from a pole on the skunk platform in PalmDale, about 100 kilometers north of Los Angeles.
After a steep climb over sod fields just east of the runway, the plane was seen banking to the north on a trajectory towards Edwards Air Force Base, where it landed safely about an hour later near NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center. It was accompanied by a NASA Chase flight.
The unique design of the Plane is designed to significantly reduce the usual sonic boom that is usually produced when the plane breaks the sound barrier, reducing the volume to a muffled “sonic thump” no car door.
The perfection of low-decibel aircraft technology is intended to overcome one of the main obstacles in commercial supersonic aircraft, long limited to populated areas due to noise concerns, according to the release.
The single-engine X-59, measuring just 100 meters) from nose to tail, flies at a high speed, as it is expected to be its first test flight, achieving 230 mph (370 KPH), according to Lokheed Martin. The maximum altitude during the flight was 3,660 meters).
About 200 Aerospace workers and their families watched the sustoff from a sheltered stand parked on a nearby highway.
“The IX-59 successfully completed its first flight this morning,” Martin spokeswoman Candis Roussel told Reuters in a brief emailed statement, hailing it as “an important milestone.”
NASA’s Moving X-59 Test Pilot Nils Larson was at the controls in a single cockpit cockpit, Roussel said.
The IX-59, a one-of-a-kind experimental aircraft, is designed to reach a take-off speed of 925 mph (1,490 kph), or Mach 1.4, at twice the altitude and twice as fast as other twin-engine aircraft, the company said.
Information gleaned from research on the X-59 will inform the development of new nationally-based aviation noise thresholds, the company said.
The SuperSonic Concorde aircraft was first scheduled for transatlantic flights with British Airways and Air France in 1976. But the aircraft was retired due to high operating costs due to high-altitude crashes in July 2000 and the September 11 attacks in 2001.
In tracking materials posted online last month, NASA said the first flight of the X-59 will be “a low loop at about 240 mph (386 kph) to check system integration, kicking off the flight test phase focused on verifying the aircraft’s flight.”
With subsequent test flights, the X-59 will travel higher and faster, eventually exceeding the speed of sound – about 761 mph (1,225 kph) at sea level.
California manufacturers California manufacturers earlier this month named the X-59 as the 2025 “coolest thing made in California” in its annual nationwide technology competition.
“This mission establishes America’s position as a Leader in Aviation and has the potential to change the way society flies,” said US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who is also NASA’s managing director, in a statement.
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