In a joint ceremony with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California, on Friday, Nasa revealed the X-59, an experimental aircraft that is expected to fly at 1.4 times the speed of sound – or 925mph (1,488 km/h).
Explaining the configurations at Friday’s launch event, Nasa’s deputy administrator, Pam Melroy, said: “We made that decision to make it quieter, but it’s actually an important step forward in and of itself in advancing aviation technology.
“[With the] huge challenge [of] limited visibility in the cockpit, the team developed the external vision system, which really is a marvel of high-resolution cameras feeding an ultra-high-resolution monitor.”
Melroy added: “The external vision system has the potential to influence future aircraft designs where the absence of that forward-facing window may prove advantageous for engineering reasons, as it did for us.”
Addressing that ban at Friday’s launch event, Bob Pearce – Nasa’s associate administrator for its aeronautics research mission – said: “Grounded flight testing showed us it was possible to design an aircraft that would produce a soft thump instead of a sonic boom.
In the post-launch press conference, David Richardson, Lockheed Martin’s X-59 program director, said that taxi tests of the X-59 were expected to start around late spring or early summer.
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