NASA’s freshly painted X-59 aircraft will be moved out of the hangar on Friday, January 12, ready for its first takeoff. The experimental aircraft was built by Lockheed Martin to develop a quieter form of supersonic flight.
X-59 is NASA’s exploration missions, whose purpose was to demonstrate that supersonic flight produces only a sonic “thump,” rather than the deafening sonic boom typically produced by supersonic aircraft. The mission is expected to fly for the first time this year, with testing continuing until 2027.
But we were a little ahead of ourselves. The aircraft will be moved out of the hangar in Palmdale, Calif., at 4 p.m. ET on Friday.You can watch live NASA website and on YouTube (embedded above). While the plane’s first flight may still be a long way off — hopefully we’ll get more details about the timing during Friday’s ceremony — this will be the first time anyone has seen the pointy aircraft The aircraft in all its red, white and blue glory. Leaders from NASA and Lockheed Martin will speak at the event.
Supersonic flight occurs when a flying object exceeds the sound barrier: 767 miles per hour (1,234 kilometers per hour), or Mach 1. Chuck Yeager was the first person to break the sound barrier in an airplane, doing so in 1947.Yeager his famous flight The Bell X-1 was one of the earliest experimental aircraft, also known as the X-plane.
Some 77 years later, the X-59 would inherit the Supersonic mantle. The introduction of the X-59 marks the beginning of the first phase of the Quest mission. The second phase will validate the silent supersonic technology and test the aircraft’s performance in the air. Finally, by 2026, the X-59 will fly over several U.S. cities and then survey residents in those cities to see how disruptive the noise produced by the aircraft is.
“The idea of lifting the ban on supersonic flight over land is really exciting,” Katherine Bam, NASA’s low-explosive flight demonstrator program manager, said in a NASA interview. release. “This is the future that the X-59 can deliver.”
If all goes well and the public sees the sound thump as unobtrusive, regulators may ease regulations Limitations of commercial supersonic flight over land. It will be years before such flights become the norm. David Richardson, Lockheed Martin engineer and X-59 program director, told cbs news 2035 is a realistic ballpark target for commercial supersonic land flight.
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