NASA plans to build supersonic civil aircraft

NASA's supersonic airliner, quieter than Concorde, could be tested in 2019.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is accepting designs for a supersonic civil aircraft that would be 60 dBA quieter than modern supersonic aircraft such as Concorde from technology contractors.according to Aviation Week.

At the end of July 2017, Lockheed Martin willpresented a preliminary design of the low-noise supersonic aircraft concept according to h$20 million contract with NASA. NASA will evaluate preliminary designs submitted by NASA and other contractors for four days.

NASA will then award a contract to the contractor that comes up with the best solution to build the hypersonic X-plane. The winning design willwill undergo rigorous testing in 2019.

“We are ready to move forward with this experimental aircraft,” said Rob Weiss, executive vice president and general manager of advanced development programs at Lockheed Martin.

The X-plane's test flights will take place in two phases at the Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, USA, and will be completed at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

Supersonic civil flights over land are banned in the US.since March 1973. Concorde was the only supersonic airliner ever to serve in the United States, but the model is now retired.

According to VNE