Photo: Lockheed Martin / Courtesy
NASA is working on the development of a new ultra-quiet supersonic aircraft that can begin testing during the course of 2023.. The US space agency hopes this will allow it to create a new type of technology that will reduce the sound footprint of aircraft capable of flying faster than the speed of sound.
The importance of making progress in this regard is that it would allow this type of technology to be brought to civil aeronautics in such a way that new aircraft models can be manufactured that take advantage of these improvements.
“NASA’s X-59 is intended to validate and demonstrate the design tools and technologies that make it possible to create an aircraft with a different shape that alters the behavior of supersonic shock waves.”explains Gautam Shah of the agency’s Langley Research Center.
According to NASA, the new technology works by weakening the shock waves generated by the explosion of the aircraft engine. Those responsible for the project ensure that the new sound reduction system incorporated in the X-59 is so advanced that the level of noise heard from aircraft is equivalent to that generated by a car door being closed.
They highlight that in comparison to the Concorde, the iconic supersonic aircraft that became popular between the 1980s and the early 2000s, which was capable of generating noise with an intensity of up to 110 decibels, the new aircraft designed by Lockheed Martin together with NASA They have an emission of up to 75 decibels.
The data provided by the research carried out through the X-59 could be reflected in much shorter travel times, which would improve air connectivity, both to and from the United States.
“The X-59 is designed to reduce the sound of sonic booms to a quiet sonic ‘thump’. This will be demonstrated when NASA flies it over US communities starting in 2025 with the goal of providing the data needed to open up the future to commercial supersonic flight over land, greatly reducing flight times.”
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