About an hour after sunrise over the Mojave Desert of Southern California, NASA’s newest experimental supersonic jet took to the skies for the first time on Tuesday. The X-59 Quesst (Quiet SuperSonic Technology) is designed to decrease the noise of a sonic boom when an aircraft breaks the sound barrier, paving the way for future commercial jets to fly at supersonic speeds over land. The jet, built by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, took off from US Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. The Concorde, which was the only successful commercial supersonic jet, was limited to flying at supersonic speeds only over the oceans. These areas of high pressure coalesce into large shock waves when the plane goes supersonic, producing the double thunderclap of a sonic boom.