NASA’s X-59 “frankenjet” attempts high-altitude flight without a sonic boom

Going all over the world

The biggest test of the success of the X-59 design will come in the third phase of the program, when NASA plans to fly the plane over the United States. The agency wants to test X-59 flights in areas that are representative of the United States at large in terms of population, infrastructure, weather, terrain, and more.

Ground microphone designs will also be sent, but NASA also plans to recruit community members who can share their thoughts on the sounds they hear every day during flight tests. Each area can be tested regularly for a month, during which they can hear pulses of 70 PldB to 90 PldB, Coen said.

“Every day, we fly the group and (fly) the X-59 a little bit differently, so each plane makes a quieter or louder noise,” Coen said. Most people can’t hear anything in the low end, but high-pitched sounds can approach “an annoying thing,” he said.

In the first community test, the X-59 will take off from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California’s Mojave Desert before a more intensive test passes over an unnamed neighborhood that doesn’t hear the sonic booms from other test planes.

But tests to follow elsewhere in the United States will require an airport that can support the X-59’s 10,000-foot runway. Although NASA has not yet finalized the list of areas designated for flight testing, most major airports have long runways that can accommodate the X-59.

NASA’s X-59 space probe arrives at Edwards Air Force Base in California on Thursday, March 26, 2026.

Public comments and other information about the X-59 test program will eventually be shared with the US Federal Aviation Administration and the International Civil Aviation Organization, so regulators will have evidence to develop new standards for high-altitude flights.

“The goal is to find a standard that will allow us to have more advanced aircraft in the future while still protecting the people on the ground,” Coen said. “Part 3, where people are allowed to reflect on what they heard and how it affected them, is something I’m really looking forward to.”