There’s No Place Like NASA’s New X-59 Hangar Home

There’s no sign reading “home sweet home” in the hangar where the X‑59 now sits, but the sentiment is unmistakable among those tending to the quiet supersonic aircraft. Located at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, the X-59 hangar was built in 1968 but looks like new thanks to a full renovation and modernization . While the X-59 was being assembled in Palmdale, California, workers at NASA Armstrong gutted the hangar, adding new electrical wiring, a fire suppression system, office space, air conditioning, and other safety features. “The whole team is incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished in preparing this new home for the X-59,” said Bryan Watters, the NASA project manager at Armstrong who led the renovation effort. “The fact we could take a 1960s hangar and modernize it for use by a 2020’s X-plane is very special.” The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission to enable a new era of commercial supersonic air travel over land by reducing the sound of typically loud sonic booms to a much quieter sonic thump. When NASA test pilot Nils Larson successfully took the X-59 into the air for the first time on Oct. 28, 2025, he flew from the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works assembly site in Palmdale to nearby NASA Armstrong, from where test flights have continued to make progress. …