NASA fires up its X-59 quiet supersonic jet engine for the first time
But NASA wants to show that faster-than-sound travel is possible without the annoyance of the boom, which is where its X-59 experimental aircraft comes in. The X-59, built by Lockheed Martin, is designed to create a “thump” rather than a boom when traveling past the sound barrier, with the aim to make it less annoying to those people beneath.