NASA's Quiet Supersonic X-59 Marks a Year of Flight Tests
The experimental jet has flown about 40 times and reached Mach 1.53, and it's heading to Florida for a public expo before its quiet-boom tests over communities.
NASA's X-59, an experimental jet designed to fly faster than sound with a quiet thump instead of a loud sonic boom, marked a year since its first flight on October 28, 2025, and is heading to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for an expo, Aviation International News and Flying magazine report. The aircraft, built by Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works for NASA's Quesst mission, has completed about 40 test flights and reached speeds up to Mach 1.53.
It first went supersonic on June 5, reaching Mach 1.1 at 43,400 feet during an 81-minute flight from Edwards Air Force Base in California, and later hit its planned cruise conditions of Mach 1.4 at 55,000 feet. The next phase is to measure how loud its sound is on the ground and how people below perceive it. NASA plans to share that data with regulators, who currently ban commercial supersonic flight over land in the U.S.
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