NASA's "silent" supersonic X-59 has completed a year of flight testing and is now crossing the US for the first time, on its way to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
It left Edwards Air Force Base in California on October 28, exactly one year after its first flight, and stops in El Paso, Fort Worth and Birmingham with chase planes alongside.
It will be on static display at the MAX POWER show on November 7-8.
The plane was built by Lockheed Martin.
It is designed to cruise at Mach 1.4 at 55,000 feet and produce a soft "sonic thump" of about 75 decibels, about as loud as a car door closing, instead of a full sonic boom.
Its very long nose shapes the shock waves, and since it has no windshield the pilot sees ahead through a camera-based vision system.
The X-59 first broke the sound barrier on June 5, 2026, flying more than 40 times, reaching a top score of Mach 1.53 and above 56,000 feet.
Next, NASA will measure actual noise on the ground and fly over communities to gauge public response.
The data is intended to help regulators decide whether to allow commercial supersonic flights over land, which the US has banned since 1973.