Low Boom Flight Demonstrator (LBFD) Project

The Low Boom Flight Demonstrator project (LBFD) is part of NASA’s effort to help enable new aircraft noise standards required to open the market to commercial supersonic flight over land. The federal government banned all civilian supersonic flights over land more than fifty years ago because of sonic boom noise.

Over the past decade, fundamental research and experimentation have shown the possibility of supersonic flight with greatly reduced sonic boom noise. The LBFD project will demonstrate that reduction using a purpose-built experimental aircraft designated the X-59.

LBFD leads Phase 1 of the Quesst mission, which covers the X-59’s design, fabrication, ground tests and checkout flights. After the aircraft is shown to be safe and performing as expected, LBFD will support Phase 2 efforts to prove the X-59 produces a quiet sound to people on the ground and is safe for operations in the National Airspace System.

United States

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