NASA X-Plane Announcement Set for Max Power Show
Administrator Jared Isaacman says the agency will announce a new X-plane at the Max Power exhibition at Kennedy Space Center this coming weekend. He said the…
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman says NASA will announce a new X-plane at the Max Power exhibition at Kennedy Space Center in Florida this coming weekend. Isaacman said the aircraft is not the one people have been speculating about amid questions over a retired SR-71 Blackbird.
The announcement will add to NASA’s promised expansion of its experimental aircraft program, while leaving the Blackbird’s future separate from the new plane. Isaacman made the remarks during an episode of NASASpaceflight’s The Flame Trench podcast posted online last Friday.
What will NASA announce at Max Power?
Isaacman said NASA would reveal a new X-plane at the exhibition, which is set to begin on Saturday. He did not identify the aircraft in the podcast discussion.
“I am gonna deliver on the promise there will be more X-planes,” Isaacman said. He also emphasized that the planned announcement was “not the one you’re thinking about.”
The distinction matters because attention has focused on SR-71 number 844, which disappeared from public display earlier this year. The aircraft had been displayed at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, co-located at Edwards Air Force Base in California, after it retired in 1999. It was the last flying Blackbird.
Isaacman addressed the aircraft after Eric Johnson, a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics educator and streamer who joined the podcast, asked whether 844 had been powered on. Isaacman replied that they were cleaning it, describing it as dusty from its time in the desert.
“So, we’re just cleaning it, man,” he said. He added that it “just felt like it needed a cleaning.”
Why is the SR-71 part of the discussion?
Speculation about a possible return to flight for an SR-71 has circulated since September, after Isaacman made cryptic remarks at a conference and showed an image of a silhouette resembling a Blackbird. Reports that NASA had approached former SR-71 program members also added to the discussion.
Isaacman pushed back on the connection between that speculation and the coming X-plane announcement. He also deflected a direct question about whether the displayed SR-71 might fly again, joking that NASA was “just cleaning it, man.”
The agency’s broader plans reach beyond the Blackbird. Isaacman has repeatedly pledged to rebuild NASA’s X-plane portfolio, including aircraft that could be capable of supersonic or hypersonic flight. NASA budget proposals and the previously announced Aeronautics Flight Accelerator initiative have reflected that push.
There are already experimental aircraft associated with the program. The F-16 VISTA, a modified two-seat F-16D, is designated the X-62A and serves as a testbed in active U.S. Air Force service at Edwards. NASA’s Armstrong museum also displays retired X-planes, including an F-16XL and an X-29.
Isaacman recently visited Armstrong, primarily to mark Troy Asher’s appointment as the facility’s new director. He joked on the podcast that staff knew to move faster when passing the outdoor museum, before praising the F-16 VISTA and other aircraft there.
NASA is due to make its new X-plane announcement when the Max Power exhibition begins on Saturday.
