Collins delivers avionics for NASA's supersonic X-59 test aircraft

摘要

Collins Aerospace has handed over the avionics system for NASA's X-59, bringing the Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) research aircraft a step closer to its first flight in 2022. Being built at Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works facility in Palmdale,California, the X-59 will be used to conduct sonic boom trials over various population centers to generate noise data that could be used to ultimately develop new interna-tional standards for supersonic transport.Collins is providing a Pro Line Fusion-based avionics system that is designed to accommodate the unusual design of the X-59, including a lack of forward-looking windows. "We are bringing Pro Line Fusion to the world of supersonic with an opti-mized solution for the X-59," said Peeter Soot, Collins Aerospace senior director of marketing for avionics. "It has no for-ward-looking windscreen, so we are adding EVS [enhanced vision] and SVS [synthetic vision] to give pilots all the visual refer-ences they need. And we are introducing touchscreens and a new HUD to combine all the images, and a suite of navigation and surveillance equipment."