NASA’s X-59 supersonic plane was announced last year to much excitement and it looks like this year we may see it hit the skies for the first time.
The space agency have revealed that plans are going incredibly smoothly and they are on track, with their partners Lockheed Martin to bring the quietest supersonic plane ever to life.
NASA have announced that the X-59 will be a demonstrator plane for the Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) program, working to try and reduce the sound of the sonic boom when a plane goes supersonic.
Word has been spread around the testing area suggesting that engine ground performance tests are already occurring as it gets closer and closer to the big day.
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The X-59 won’t create sonic booms
In order to reduce the shocking and deafening sound of a sonic boom generated when a plane goes supersonic, NASA have been working with Lockheed Martin on a new jet that is meant to reduce the sound to something akin to a car door slamming.
The X-59, the front man of NASA’s silent supersonic planes is built to look like a fighter jet, but has a single engine installed on top of the plane, no windows and a surprising 38 feet long nose.
It seems that all the tests are going exceedingly well, with NASA being pleased with how the plane has worked in controlled ground tests, the most important of these are ‘throttle snaps’ where pilots quickly move the throttle back and forth to check the reaction time is correct.
All of these tests are leading up to hopefully the plane being ready to fly sooner than you might think, with word spreading that the maiden flight will happen before the end of the year.
Going supersonic
There’s no doubt that planes that have the ability to break the sound barrier are popular, one only has to look at how exciting and expensive a Concorde trip was back in the day.
However, NASA has been working ahead of even going supersonic and are now trying to reduce the sound a plane makes when it breaks the sound barrier, one step on from creating planes that are that fast, it’s all about making them quiet now.
A sonic boom is created by shock waves, when something breaks the sound barrier, and the higher a plane flies, the louder the boom is going to be as it spreads laterally.
NASA are trying to make their plane fly higher, faster and further but rescue all of our eardrums, we can’t wait to see it in action later this year.
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