Lockheed Martin Skunk Works has been awarded a contract by NASA to design, build and flight test the Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator—an aircraft designed for supersonic passenger air travel.

The company will design the X-plane to cruise at 55,000 feet, fly at speeds up to Mach 1.4 and generate a supersonic heartbeat instead of a sonic boom.

"It is super exciting to be back designing and flying X-planes at this scale," says Jaiwon Shin, NASA's associate administrator for aeronautics. "Our long tradition of solving the technical barriers of supersonic flight to benefit everyone continues."

Lockheed Martin Skunk Works will build the experimental aircraft, known as the X-plane, based off of its preliminary design developed under NASA’s Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST). The goal is to build a plane that will help NASA to establish acceptable commercial supersonic noise standard to overturn current regulations banning commercial supersonic travel over land.

The aircraft will be built at Lockheed Martin’s facility in Palmdale, Calif., with the first flight expected to happen in 2021.