NASA's X-59 Quiet Supersonic Test Jet Spotted On A Trailer Heading To Texas
The Skunk Works-built X-59 that could revolutionize supersonic travel is getting closer to its first flight.
By Joseph Trevithick December 23, 2021
The War Zone
The experimental X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology aircraft, or QueSST, which Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works is building for NASA, is now on its way to the company's plant in Fort Worth, Texas. Once there, the jet, which is being designed to explore sonic-boom-mitigating technologies that could have significant impacts on the future of supersonic flight, will undergo structural testing ahead of a planned first flight next year.
Photographer Aldo Boccaccio grabbed pictures of the aircraft under wraps on a semi-trailer in Marana, Arizona earlier this week and was kind enough to share them with us. The plane has been under construction at Skunk Work's facility at the U.S. Air Force's Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, since 2018. Lockheed Martin confirmed to The War Zone that the current plan is to truck the X-59 to its Texas plant, which is best known for hosting the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter assembly line, for structural tests before bringing it back to Palmdale for the initial round of flight testing. It does seem somewhat curious that such a fragile, one-off design would be moved via road instead of something like a U.S. Air Force C-5 Galaxy transport plane.
The purpose of the X-59 and the QueSST program, as the name implies, is to explore technologies that could be able to dramatically reduce the sound and the felt impact of sonic booms on planes flying faster than the speed of sound. As The War Zone has explained in the past, the disruptive noise and shaking that planes flying above the speed of sound produce remain key impediments to viable commercial supersonic aircraft. These issues also impose restrictions on military training involving supersonic aircraft and 'quieting' the booms could be beneficial during combat operations, as well.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43649/skunk-works-x-59-quiet-supersonic-testbed-jet-spotted-on-a-trailer-heading-to-texas
