NASA’s Quiet Supersonic X-59 Flies Six Times in One Week — and Hits Mach 1.53
The needle-nosed experimental jet built to turn sonic booms into soft “thumps” set a new flight-tempo record in late September and reached its fastest speed yet.
NASA’s X-59 — the long, needle-nosed aircraft designed to fly faster than sound without the window-rattling sonic boom — had its busiest week ever in late September.
Six flights, four days
Between September 22 and 25, the X-59 flew twice on each of three days from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California. Those six flights beat the aircraft’s previous single-week record by two and brought its total to 38 test flights.
During that run, one flight reached Mach 1.53, about 1,010 miles per hour — faster than the roughly Mach 1.4 cruise speed planned for the upcoming acoustic research flights. NASA did not specify which of the six flights set the new top speed. The agency shared the results on October 2.
Why this jet matters
Commercial supersonic flight over land has been effectively banned in the United States for decades because sonic booms are so disruptive. The X-59’s shape is designed to break up the shockwaves so that people on the ground hear something closer to a gentle thump.
If upcoming community-response flights show the noise is acceptable, the data could help regulators reconsider those rules — potentially opening the door to much faster cross-country travel in the future.
What’s next
After the record week, the aircraft entered a scheduled maintenance period of around three weeks, followed by a systems review before testing resumes. Aviation fans online were thrilled by the pace: after years of development, the X-59 is clearly hitting its stride.
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