NASA Selects Contractor for Quiet Supersonic Flight Community Testing

[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

 



  May 07, 2021 
RELEASE 21-057
NASA Selects Contractor for Quiet Supersonic Flight Community Testing
A composite image, which includes an illustration of NASA’s X-59 research aircraft
flying_004.jpg
This composite image, which includes an illustration of NASA’s X-59 research aircraft, shows the airplane’s final configuration following years of research and design engineering. The single-pilot aircraft is now under construction at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California.
Credits: Lockheed Martin

NASA has awarded a contract to Harris Miller Miller & Hanson Inc. of Burlington, Massachusetts, to support a national campaign of community overflight tests using the agency’s X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology research aircraft.

This cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract has a maximum potential value of approximately $29 million with an eight-year period of performance.

Significant subcontractors include:

  • Westat Inc. of Rockville, Maryland
  • Blue Ridge Research and Consulting LLC of Asheville, North Carolina
  • EMS Brüel & Kjær Inc. of Folsom, California

NASA is designing and building the X-59 research aircraft – a piloted, single-seat supersonic X-plane – with technology that reduces the loudness of a sonic boom to that of a gentle thump. NASA's aeronautical innovators are leading a team across government and industry to collect data that could allow supersonic flight over land, dramatically reducing travel time within the United States or to anywhere in the world.

The scope of the work under this contract includes supporting NASA in the planning, execution, and documentation of phase three of the agency’s Low-Boom Flight Demonstration mission.

NASA currently is working with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works of Palmdale, California, to design, build and conduct initial flight testing of the X-59 research aircraft as part of phase one of the mission. The team will work during phase two to prove the X-59 performs as designed and is safe to fly in the national airspace. During phase three, NASA will fly the X-59 aircraft over communities yet to be selected and ask residents to share their response to the sound the aircraft generates during supersonic flight.

NASA will provide the results of the community survey and the X-59 acoustic data collected during the community overflight tests to U.S. and international regulators for use in considering new sound-based rules to enable supersonic flight over land.

For more information on the X-59 aircraft and its development, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/X59

-end-

 

Press Contacts

J.D. Harrington
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-5241
j.d.harrington@xxxxxxxx

Sasha Ellis
Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va.
757-272-9859
Sasha.c.ellis@xxxxxxxx

 

NASA news releases and other information are available automatically by sending an e-mail message with the subject line subscribe to hqnews-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To unsubscribe from the list, send an e-mail message with the subject line unsubscribe to hqnews-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

 
_______________________________________________
Hqnews mailing list
Hqnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://newsletters.nasa.gov/mailman/listinfo/hqnews
[Index of Archives]     [JPL News]     [Cassini News From Saturn]     [NASA Marshall Space Flight Center News]     [NASA Science News]     [James Web Space Telescope News]     [JPL Home]     [NASA KSC]     [NTSB]     [Deep Creek Hot Springs]     [Yosemite Discussion]     [NSF]     [Telescopes]

  Powered by Linux