By Steve Gorman

PALMDALE, California (Reuters) -NASA’s X-59 supersonic-but-quiet jet airplane soared over the Southern California desert on Tuesday in the first test flight of an experimental aircraft designed to break the sound barrier without all the noise.

The sleek aircraft, measuring just under 100 feet (30 meters) from nose to tail, took off about an hour after sunrise from a runway at Plant 42 of the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, about 60 miles (100 km) north of Los Angeles.

After a steep climb over sod fields just east of the runway, the plane was seen banking to the north on a trajectory toward Edwards Air Force Base, about a dozen miles away, where it was expected to land. It was accompanied by a NASA chase plane.

The single-engine X-59 appeared to fly at

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