Jane Edwards
NASA and Lockheed Martin have concluded the preliminary design review of an experimental supersonic transport aircraft.
The review sought to show the Quiet Supersonic Transport X-plane’s capability to meet the mission goals for a Low Boom Flight Demonstration aircraft, NASA said Tuesday.
Lockheed and the agency will continue to conduct wind tunnel tests, static inlet performance evaluation and other preliminary design work on QueSST at Langley Research Center in Virginia.
Lockheed designed QueSST under a contract awarded in 2016 through NASA’s New Aviation Horizons program and completed wind tunnel tests of a QueSST scale model in May at Glenn Research Center in Ohio.
NASA intends to launch a competition later this year and award a contract in early 2018 to develop the LBFD X-plane with plans for test flights by 2021.
