A futuristic-looking aircraft that could pave the way for a new Concorde has taken to the skies for the first time. The “one-of-a-kind” supersonic X-59 spent about an hour in the air after taking off from a runway at a US Air Force manufacturing facility in Palmdale, California.
The single-seat experimental aircraft has been built for NASA by American aerospace firm Lockheed Martin. The manufacturer said the aircraft performed “exactly as planned” in the test flight over southern California on Tuesday morning, landing at Edwards Air Force Base, near NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center.
The X-59 is uniquely shaped to fly supersonically without causing a thunderous sonic boom — an issue that plagued the Anglo-French airliner Concorde.
The jet is almost 30 metres long (100 feet), with its thin nose accounting for almost a third of its length.
Its tapered nose is designed to break up the shock waves that would ordinarily result in a supersonic aircraft causing a sonic boom.
The sound caused by the aircraft, described as a “sonic thump”, is predicted to be much quieter and no louder than a car door being shut.
In June last year, NASA’s Lori Ozoroski said: “The sonic thumps that are expected from the X-59 are much quieter and they don’t have quite that impulsiveness that you would get from a normal sonic boom.
“So the startle factor is lower, and the sound level is more like — we’ve done studies— it’s more like a car door closing, you know, across the street at your neighbour’s house rather than the very loud typical sonic boom.”
The X-59, dubbed as ‘Son of Concorde’, is designed to cruise at Mach 1.4 (925 miles per hour) at an altitude of 55,000 feet — more than twice as high and as fast as current airliners — while it is expected to have a top speed of Mach 1.5 (990 miles per hour).
It is estimated the X-59 would be able to fly from London to New York in around four hours less than today’s jet airliners.
Passenger jets currently complete the flight in usually seven or eight hours, while estimates suggest it would take the X-59 just three hours and 44 minutes.
The X-59 flew, as expected, at subsonic speeds on its test flight, the Reuters news agency reported, citing Lockheed Martin.
It said the aircraft reached 230 miles per hour, with a peak altitude of 12,000 feet.
Lockheed Martin said data from the test will inform development of “acceptable noise thresholds related to supersonic commercial flight over land”.
It said this will pave the way for a new generation of supersonic aircraft that “can efficiently and sustainably transport passengers and cargo twice as fast as aircraft today”.
The X-59 will never carry passengers itself but NASA hopes it will kick off a new era of quiet supersonic commercial travel.
The iconic Concorde, which was operated by British Airways and Air France, was retired from service in 2003.