NEXST:- National Experimental Supersonic Transport
NEXST stands for National Experimental Supersonic Transport is a project that was commenced in 1997 by National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL). The project aims at technological research and development of for the next generation supersonic transport. Supersonic transport (SST) is a civilian supersonic aircraft which is designed to transport its passengers at a speed greater than that of sound. The last flight of an SST was in the year 2003. However, to date a lot of companies have proposed supersonic business jets. NEXST emphasizes technological objectives. The project consists of two areas. The first being basic research on key technologies for future supersonic transport. The second is development and flight tests on unmanned scaled airplanes. Two types of vehicles were originally planned for the verification of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based aerodynamic design technology which was not powered (NEXST-1) and jet powered (NEXST-2) airplanes. However, the NEXST-2 plan was canceled in the year 2003 and NEXST-1 made a successful flight in 2005.