On October 28, 2025, the X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) X-plane took off from Palmdale, CA and safely landed at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center. This event was an important milestone towards addressing one of the most significant obstacles that has prevented commercial supersonic aircraft from becoming widespread: the sonic boom associated with supersonic flight. X-59 is a clean sheet, piloted supersonic X-plane that Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works has designed and built to support NASA’s QueSST mission. It is designed to create a quiet supersonic “thump” rather than a deafening “boom”.
Cost: Free
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This talk will provide a brief overview of the history of low boom shaping technology. It will cover how modern Computational Fluid Dynamics, computing capabilities, and traditional wind tunnel testing allow us to shape supersonic aircraft to reduce the loudness of sonic booms by more than 30 dB compared to legacy supersonic platforms. The talk will include an overview of the X-59 aircraft design along with a development status and a discussion of how NASA plans to support future efforts to revise current FAA restrictions that prohibit supersonic flight overland.
Dr. Michael Buonanno is the Air Vehicle lead for the X-59 at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale. In this role he coordinates the technical development of the X-plane design. Prior to this role, he served as Program Manager for the activities that immediately preceded QueSST: The Low Boom Flight Demonstrator Concept Formulation and Refinement studies as well as the N+2 Supersonic Validations program. Dr. Buonanno is a Lockheed Martin Fellow and has 20 years of industry experience as a conceptual design engineer at Skunk Works. In that time, he has led or supported a diverse array of aircraft development programs including small UAVs and solar-powered aircraft. He received his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology and earned his Master of Science and Doctorate degrees in Aerospace
Engineering from Georgia Tech.