Iran Daily

NASA to build supersonic manned plane without sonic boom

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The US space agency NASA has started to create a supersonic manned aircraft that may cause no eardrum-battering sonic boom.

It announced plans to grant a $247.5 million contract to Lockheed Martin, an American aerospace and defense group to design and build a new plane, according to xinhuanet.com.

In this Low-boom Flight Demonstrat­ion contract, Lockheed Martin is obliged to completing the design and fabricatio­n of an experiment­al aircraft, known as an X-plane.

The plane is expected to cruise at an elevation of more than 16,700 meters, at a speed of more than 1,500 kilometers per hour, but create a sound about as loud as a car door closing instead of a sonic boom, according to NASA.

Once NASA accepts the aircraft from its contractor in late 2021, the agency will perform additional flight tests to prove the quiet supersonic technology works as designed, aircraft performanc­e is robust, and it’s safe to operate in the country.

According to its plan, beginning in mid-2022, NASA will fly the X-plane over select the US cities and collect data about community responses to the flights.

The agency said this data set will be provided to the US and internatio­nal regulators for their use in considerin­g new sound-based rules regarding supersonic flight over land, which could enable new commercial cargo and passenger markets in faster-than-sound air travel.

The X-plane’s configurat­ion will be based on a preliminar­y design developed by Lockheed Martin under a contract awarded in 2016.

The proposed aircraft will be 28.65 meters long with a wingspan of nearly nine meters, which have a fully-fueled takeoff weight of about 14,650 kilograms.

The jet will be propelled by a single General Electric F414 engine, the power plant used by F/A-18E/F fighters.

Jim Less, a primary NASA pilots who will fly the X-plane after Lockheed Martin’s pilots have completed initial test flights, said, “This is probably going to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunit­y for me. We’re all pretty excited.”

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nasa.gov

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