Quiet supersonic X-59 jet soars over California desert in first test flight

By Steve Gorman

PALMDALE, California (GWN) -NASA’s X-59 supersonic-but-quiet jet soared over the Southern California desert on Tuesday in the first test flight of an experimental plane designed to break the sound barrier with little noise, paving the way in which for sooner industrial air journey.

The glossy plane, constructed for NASA by aerospace contractor Lockheed Martin, took off about an hour after dawn from a runway at Plant 42 of the company’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, about 60 miles (100 km) north of Los Angeles.

After a steep climb over sod fields just east of the runway, the aircraft was seen banking to the north on a trajectory toward Edwards Air Force Base, where it landed safely about an hour later close to NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center. It was accompanied by a NASA chase aircraft.

The aircraft’s distinctive form is designed to drastically scale back the explosive-like sonic increase usually produced when an plane breaks the sound barrier, decreasing the quantity to a muffled “sonic thump” no louder than slamming a car door.

Perfection of such low-decibel flight technology is aimed at overcoming one of the first obstacles to supersonic industrial flight, long restricted over populated areas on land due to noise considerations, according to Lockheed.

The single-engine X-59, measuring just under 100 toes (30 meters) from nostril to tail, flew at subsonic speeds, as was anticipated for its initial test flight, reaching 230 mph (370 kph), according to Lockheed Martin. Its peak altitude during the flight was 12,000 toes (3,660 meters).

About 200 aerospace staff and their households watched the takeoff from a protected distance parked along a close by freeway.

“X-59 successfully completed its first flight this morning,” Lockheed Martin spokesperson Candis Roussel told GWN in a transient electronic mail assertion, hailing it as a “significant aviation milestone.”

NASA’s lead X-59 test pilot Nils Larson was at the controls in the single-crew cockpit for the flight, Roussel said.

The X-59, a one-of-a-kind experimental plane, is constructed to attain a cruising velocity of 925 mph (1,490 kph), or Mach 1.4, at an altitude of 55,000 toes (16,764 meters), more than twice as high and practically twice as fast as typical airliners fly, the company said.

Data derived from research with the X-59 will inform development of new sound thresholds for supersonic flight over land, the company said.

The supersonic Concorde plane started scheduled transatlantic flights with British Airways and Air France in 1976. But the aircraft was retired in 2003 due to high working prices, restricted seating and sluggish passenger numbers following a deadly crash in July 2000 and the September 11 assaults in 2001.

In press supplies posted online last month, NASA said the X-59’s first flight could be a “lower-altitude loop at about 240 mph (386 kph) to check system integration, kicking off a phase of flight testing focused on verifying the aircraft’s airworthiness and safety.”

During subsequent test flights, the X-59 will journey increased and sooner, finally exceeding the velocity of sound – roughly 761 mph (1,225 kph) at sea degree.

The California Manufacturers & Technology Association earlier this month named the X-59 as 2025’s “Coolest Thing Made in California” in its annual statewide technology contest.

“This work sustains America’s place as the leader in aviation and has the potential to change the way the public flies,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who is also performing NASA administrator, said in a assertion.

(Reporting by David Swanson in Palmdale, California; Writing and further reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Howard Goller)