Nothing seemed amiss as NASA‘s experimental X-59 supersonic jet touched down after its second test in the air, smoothly coasting onto the runway.
But the sleek, needle-nosed airplane had completed only nine minutes in the air on Friday, March 20, before a cockpit warning light forced an early landing. That warning was separate from a caution light that occurred during an earlier takeoff attempt just before 10 a.m. P.T., said Cathy Bahm, project manager at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center.
The brief flight left from Edwards Air Force Base in California at 10:54 a.m. P.T. marked only the second time the aircraft had flown. While the team originally planned for about an hour, leaders stressed that even short flights provide new data for moving the project forward. You can watch the landing in the video below.
Bob Pearce, who heads NASA’s aeronautics research, said the team made the right call to cut the flight short on Friday. The agency expects to find and fix issues at this stage of an X‑plane, an aircraft the U.S. builds to test new flight technologies and ideas.
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