National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) aircraft X-59 has achieved its first supersonic flight, marking a breakthrough moment in the agency’s goal of achieving silent supersonic flight over land.
NASA test pilot Jim “Clue” Less took off on the X-59 “Son of Concorde” at 11:08 a.m. local time Friday and flew the plane for 81 minutes, reaching a top speed of Mach 1.1 (1,147 km/h) at an altitude of 3,228 meters.
The successful test flight marks an important milestone in its experimental flight program.
The breakthrough comes after an intensive testing phase since the aircraft’s launch last October. The X-59 has completed 16 test flights in the past three months.
The agency described the ultimate goal behind the X-59 supersonic jet on its website: “The ultimate goal of the NASA X-59 Quest is to make commercial supersonic air travel over land possible by reducing deafening sonic booms to a quiet, barely audible thud.”
Celebrating the achievement, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said, “I am grateful to the NASA team and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works for their help in getting us to this point, and I hope this is the first of many collaborations as we rebuild NASA’s X-plane portfolio.”
In the final phase of the test, the space research agency aims to test the Lockheed Martin developed to its absolute limits, aiming to reach the top speed of Mach 1.6 while flying at 60,000 feet above the ground.
