NASA’s new supersonic X-59 jet took to the sky for the second time on Friday (March 20), but it could not stay for long.
potential revolutionary X-59 It landed just nine minutes after takeoff on Friday, its second attempt cut short due to a warning light in the cockpit.
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Civil supersonic flights – which travel faster than the speed of sound – have been banned in the United States since 1973 because of their disruptive effects. sonic boom. (The speed of sound at sea level is approximately 761 miles per hour or 1,225 kilometers per hour).
NASA hopes to help change that with the X-59, the centerpiece of its QUEST (“quiet supersonic technology”) mission. Long-nosed aircraft are designed to produce only a thump rather than a boom when they go supersonic.
Using the Quest information, “new data-driven acceptable noise thresholds related to supersonic flight on land can be established, which will open the door to new commercial cargo and passenger markets to provide faster-than-sound air travel,” NASA officials wrote in a study. Program Details.
100-foot-long (30.5 m) X-59 flew for the first time Taking off from the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California on October 29, 2025. (The X-59 is a joint effort between NASA and Lockheed Martin.) That 67 minutes got off to a good start, according to nasa:Pilot Nils Larsen took it to a maximum altitude of 12,000 feet (3,660 m) and a maximum speed of 230 mph (370 kph), “exactly according to plan.”
NASA wanted to “push the envelope” on the X-59’s second flight, which was expected to last about an hour. Pilot Jim “Clue” Les had to hit those previous altitude and speed marks, then take the jet to 260 mph (418 kph) at 20,000 feet (6,100 m). But this did not happen.
The X-59 took off from Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California at 1:54 pm EDT (1754 GMT; 10:54 am local time) on Friday and landed safely just nine minutes later.
“The takeoff roll and liftoff were uneventful, and we were climbing out, getting ready to establish the first test point, when we got the warning that required an immediate return to base,” Les said during a press briefing Friday afternoon.
He added, “Although I had not intended to land so quickly for my first landing, the aircraft performed very well.”
Quest team members said during the briefing that it was too early to say what caused the warning. A caution – one level lower than warning – also came up about an hour before takeoff, involving a different vehicle system, but that did not derail the flight attempt, he said.
According to Les, both issues are under review and there is no reason to be too concerned about either one.
“This was the beginning of a long flight-test campaign,” he said. “We got data we didn’t have before, and there are a lot more flights to come to gather a lot more data.”
