All posts tagged: Dizzying

NASA’s new supersonic X-59 aircraft shows off its dizzying acrobatics in new video

NASA’s new supersonic X-59 aircraft shows off its dizzying acrobatics in new video

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletterđź’ˇ Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. It’s been over a decade since engineers officially got to work on the X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST). Designed in collaboration with NASA, Lockheed Martin’s state-of-the-art aircraft is built to fly very high and very fast, all without leaving a telltale sonic boom in its wake. Lockheed finally revealed the X-59 to the public in January 2025 a few years behind schedule, and completed its first subsonic test flight that October.  They’ve been making up for lost time ever since. The X-59 has flown on nine more occasions, most recently on April 14 when it accomplished some of its biggest feats to date while cruising over the Mojave Desert in California. This time around, however, Lockheed was ready to show off the aircraft in action. From the opening maneuvers, it’s clear that a ride in the plane isn’t for the faint of heart. The dizzying ascensions and precise axial turns look uncomfortable even from the distance of a computer …

The Dizzying Contrast of Trump’s Iran Threats and Artemis II

The Dizzying Contrast of Trump’s Iran Threats and Artemis II

Published by Daniella Wilson

Seeing the Earth from space will change you so profoundly that there’s a term for it: the overview effect. The extreme minority who have had the privilege describe it similarly. You see something that you were never meant to see, namely the Earth just sitting there, with the entire universe surrounding it. Gazing upon the blue marble, surrounded by its oh-so-thin green layer of atmosphere, the auroras flickering on the fringes, is not merely awe-inspiring but something of a factory reset for one’s sense of self. Almost everyone tears up at the sight. “You don’t see borders, you don’t see religious lines, you don’t see political boundaries. All you see is Earth, and you see that we are way more alike than we are different,” Christina Koch, one of the four astronauts on the Artemis II mission, told NASA recently. Jim Lovell, describing the view on Apollo 8 from the dark side of the moon back in the late 1960s, told Chicago magazine that he could put his thumb up to the window, and in …