Nasa announces new 'X-70' plane it claims can fly like nothing has before - The Independent

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Nasa has announced a new experimental plane that it hopes will be able to fly like nothing before.

The X-70 Fractal is intended to “explore aircraft manoeuvrability in ways never before demonstrated in crewed flight”, the space agency said in its announcement. It will also let it test new flight control and other “cutting-edge technologies in real flight”, according to Jared Isaacman, the Nasa administrator.

As well as the new flight technology, the plane can carry up to 910kg of experimental payloads, both inside and outside the aircraft itself, Nasa said. That should allow for new kinds of research, it claimed.

“Its modular design and ability to rapidly swap internal and external payloads will keep our teams flying, learning, and moving quickly from one experiment to the next,” he said. It is expected to make its first flight under the Nasa banner within the next two years, and is “just one part of this new beginning for aeronautics”, he said.

The X-70 Fractal has a takeoff weight of 4,500kg, can cruise at 75 per cent of the speed of sound, fly up to 45,000 feet operate over a range of 1,726 miles. Nasa said that would let it “conduct demanding flight research across a broad range of operating conditions”.

The space agency revealed very little about the actual design of the plane. The only image that it shared in its announcement was an AI-generated one, depicting the X-70 Fractal largely shrouded in fog.

Nasa likened the new aircraft to other “X-planes” that have gone before it. As the X-70 designation suggests, there have been dozens of such American experimental aircraft, though not every one of those numbers were used.

The X-plane programme came into being in 1944, with the Bell X-1, which was a joint project between Nasa’s predecessor and the US Air Force and broke the sound barrier in 1947. It also pointed to other successful examples such as the X-15, which among other breakthroughs set the record for the highest speed recorded by a crewed, powered aircraft in 1967 and has held it ever since.

“For decades, Nasa Aeronautics has used X-planes to develop technologies that advance aviation,” said Laurie Grindle, director of the Aeronautics Division within NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate, in a statement. “It’s exciting to bring on another X-plane to accelerate and drive aeronautics research.”

Not all of those planes have been successful, however. The X-57 Maxwell was announced in 2016, as Nasa’s first X-plane in more than a decade, and was intended to demonstrate new kinds of flight that could reduce emissions and noise – but it was cancelled in 2023, because of safety problems with its propulsion system.