Jane Edwards
NASA has started to perform wind-tunnel tests on a small-scale model of a supersonic passenger jet at the space agency’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, the Daily Press reported Thursday.
Langley researchers have begun to subject the 15-percent-scale model of the Quiet Supersonic Technology X-plane to slower wind speeds at Langley’s subsonic wind tunnel in order to collect data and evaluate the model’s performance in various flap configurations and during take-off and landing operations.
Lockheed Martin and NASA also conducted wind tunnel tests in February on a preliminary design model of the QueSST X-plane at the agency’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio.
Robert Allen, a spokesman for Langley Research Center, said NASA has begun to seek proposals from aerospace companies to design and build the X-plane and expects to pick a contractor by early 2018.
NASA expects to have an actual aircraft available for flight tests by late 2021 or early 2022 at the agency’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, the report added.
