For the first time, NASA has publicly unveiled the X-59, an experimental aircraft that’s designed to pull off a remarkable engineering feat: supersonic flight without a sonic boom.
The game-changing plane rolled out of its Californian hangar on 12 January, in a moment that NASA called an “historic milestone in aviation history.”
Human engineering first broke the sound barrier in 1947 with the Bell X-1 rocket engine-powered aircraft. Supersonic flight later became available to the public in the form of Concorde (an Anglo-French enterprise), which first took to the skies in 1969. However, Concorde landed for the last time back in 2003, marking an end to supersonic commercial flights.
While there are a several reasons why Concorde was eventually shut down, perhaps the X-59 could be the force needed to make commercial supersonic flights a reality once again.
As Concorde discovered, sonic booms - the loud, explosive noise caused by the shock wave of an object traveling faster than the speed of sound, around 1,225 km/h (761 mph) per hour at sea level - can be a real annoyance for cities, causing significant disturbance to humans and even potentially causing minor damage some structures.
In a bid to overcome this problem, NASA launched the Quesst Mission, a project that sought to master supersonic flight without generating loud sonic booms. Together with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, they developed the X-59, which has been designed to relegate the noisy sonic boom to a quieter sonic “thump”.
After nearly eight years of work, NASA finally showed off X-59 to the public. Here's a 2 minute explanatory video...