NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft continues to make progress, most recently moving to the paint barn at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works’ facility in Palmdale, California. The X-59’s paint scheme will include a mainly white body, a NASA “sonic blue” underside, and red accents on the wings. The paint doesn’t just add cosmetic value. It also … Read more
As NASA explores, innovates, and inspires through its work, agency inventions aimed at monitoring atmospheric pollution, studying samples from asteroids, extracting oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, and revolutionizing flight have been named TIME’s Inventions of 2023. TIME announced the honorees on Oct. 24. “For more than 65 years, NASA has innovated for the benefit of … Read more
Nils Larson, aerospace engineer and test pilot for NASA’s X-59 aircraft, met up with his former student, Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover, on Saturday, Oct. 21 during an open house held at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The pilots originally met more than two decades ago when Larson was an instructor at the … Read more
NASA’s Quesst mission has adjusted the scheduled first flight of its X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft to 2024. A one-of-a-kind experimental aircraft, the X-59 has required complex engineering from NASA researchers working with prime contractor Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. In addition to the aircraft’s design, the X-59 also combines new technology with systems and components from … Read more
This movie shows NASA’s X-43A demonstrating supersonic-combustion ramjet (scramjet) propulsion during two of its record-setting flights in 2004. Both flights, the first on Mar. 27 and the second on Nov. 16, 2004, demonstrated sustained thrust from the X-43A’s air-breathing scramjet engine, the first at nearly 5,000 mph, the second at nearly 7,000 mph, or almost … Read more