“The X-59 made its first flight! A new era of supersonic flight begins,” the defense company captioned the video.
The tests took place on October 28, 100 km north of Los Angeles (California), writes Reuters. The X-59 took off about an hour after sunrise, flew over the desert in the southern part of the state and landed near NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center.
The agency provides the technical parameters of the aircraft – it has one engine, the length from nose to tail is just under 30 m. In its first flight, it reached the expected subsonic speed of 370 km/h, the maximum flight altitude was 3.6 thousand m. Leading X-59 test pilot from NASA Nils Larson was at the controls.
The project “from drawing board to takeoff” cost NASA more than half a billion dollars, Reuters claims. Since 2018, NASA has paid Lockheed Martin more than $518 million to develop and demonstrate the new X-59.
The company announced the start of testing back in July.
🚀 BREAKING: NASA's X-59 QueSST has completed its first successful flight — a key milestone in quiet supersonic travel.
The experimental jet, built by NASA & Lockheed Martin, took off from Palmdale, CA and landed safely at Edwards AFB after a 1-hour flight at 55,000 ft. Piloted… pic.twitter.com/Ee7nUP9gd1
— DefenseByte (@TheDefenseByte) October 28, 2025
