The End Goal: Replacing the Sonic Boom
The core challenge of supersonic flight has never been speed. It has always been shockwaves.
Traditional supersonic aircraft compress air into powerful pressure waves that reach the ground as a loud, explosive boom. The X-59’s elongated nose, highly sculpted fuselage, and unique wing geometry are engineered to spread those shockwaves out, turning a single violent boom into a softer, lower-energy “thump.”
NASA’s target profile calls for the X-59 to cruise at approximately Mach 1.4, or about 925 miles per hour, at an altitude near 55,000 feet. At those conditions, the agency hopes the sound reaching the ground will be comparable to a distant car door closing rather than a thunderclap.
That distinction is not semantic. It is the difference between prohibition and permission.
Why Regulators Are Watching Closely
The Federal Aviation Administration and its international counterparts do not set rules based on optimism. They require data.
That is where the X-59’s expanded chase-plane fleet comes in. NASA has confirmed that future supersonic tests will involve multiple aircraft equipped with specialized instrumentation, including near-field shock sensors, airborne schlieren photography systems, and geospatial navigation tools designed to map pressure disturbances in real time.
Ground-based microphone arrays will simultaneously record how those disturbances translate into sound at the surface.
Together, those datasets will form the backbone of a regulatory case: whether quiet supersonic flight is not only possible, but predictable, measurable, and enforceable.
Without that assurance, no rule changes occur.
