Category: Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate

NASA’s X-59 Nears First Flight

As we honor the legacy of aviation pioneers this National Aviation Day, NASA’s X-59 is preparing to push the boundaries of what’s possible in air travel. The quiet supersonic aircraft’s historic first flight is on the horizon, with final ground tests about to begin. Following completion of low-speed taxi tests in July 2025 in Palmdale, […]

NASA Tests Research Aircraft to Improve Air Taxi Flight Controls

Flying the friendly skies may one day include time-saving trips in air taxis to get from point A to point B – and NASA researchers are currently working to make that future a reality. They are using wind tunnel and flight tests to gather data on an electric Vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) scaled-down small […]

NASA Rehearses How to Measure X-59’s Noise Levels

In a stretch of California’s Mojave Desert, NASA conducted a full-scale “dress rehearsal” to prepare how it will measure the noise generated by the X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft. The team behind the successful test flight series operates under NASA’s Commercial Supersonic Technology project. Beginning June 3 and concluding this week, researchers conducted a dry […]

NASA’s X-59 Quiet Supersonic Aircraft Begins Taxi Tests

NASA/Jacob Shaw NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft has officially begun taxi tests, marking the first time this one-of-a-kind experimental aircraft has moved under its own power. NASA test pilot Nils Larson and the X-59 team, made up of NASA and contractor Lockheed Martin personnel, completed the aircraft’s first low-speed taxi test at U.S. Air […]

X-59 Model Tested in Japanese Supersonic Wind Tunnel

Researchers from NASA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) recently tested a scale model of the X-59 experimental aircraft in a supersonic wind tunnel located in Chofu, Japan, to assess the noise audible underneath the aircraft.  The test was an important milestone for NASA’s one-of-a-kind X-59, which is designed to fly faster than the […]

NASA Advances Pressure Sensitive Paint Research Capability

Many of us grew up using paint-by-number sets to create beautiful color pictures. For years now, NASA engineers studying aircraft and rocket designs in wind tunnels have flipped that childhood pastime, using computers to generate images from “numbers-by-paint” – pressure sensitive paint (PSP), that is. Now, advances in the use of high-speed cameras, supercomputers, and […]

NASA Tech to Measure Heat, Strain in Hypersonic Flight

A NASA system designed to measure temperature and strain on high-speed vehicles is set to make its first flights at hypersonic speeds – greater than Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound – when mounted to two research rockets launching this summer. Technicians in the Environmental Laboratory at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center […]

NASA F-15s Validate Tools for Quesst Mission

High over the Mojave Desert, two NASA F-15 research jets made a series of flights throughout May to validate tools designed to measure and record the shock waves that will be produced by the agency’s X-59 quiet supersonic experimental aircraft. The F-15s, carrying the recording tools, flew faster than the speed of sound, matching the […]

NASA’s Moffett Federal Airfield Hosts Boeing Digital Taxi Tests

New technology tested by an industry partner at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley could improve how commercial planes taxi to and from gates to runways, making operations safer and more efficient on the surfaces of airports. Airport taxiways are busy. Planes come and go while support vehicles provide maintenance, carry fuel, transport […]