Overview
- A new NASA video shows the X-59 carrying out test maneuvers over California’s Mojave Desert during recent flights.
- Pilots performed roller-coaster climbs and descents, bank-to-bank rolls, a controlled pitch-down, flutter tests to shake the airframe, and a landing-gear extension to check handling and structural margins.
- NASA says the aircraft is flying higher and faster toward near-supersonic conditions as the team builds confidence to go truly supersonic.
- The X-59’s long needle nose, top-mounted engine, and camera-based external vision system are built to spread and weaken shockwaves so people hear a softer “sonic thump” instead of a boom.
- NASA plans community overflights to measure how residents perceive that thump, a step meant to inform potential changes to the 1973 U.S. ban on routine supersonic flight over land.