The Envirosuite Ltd (ASX: EVS) share price is on the rise during early afternoon trade on Wednesday. This comes after the Sydney-based environmental tech company announced an exciting partnership with United States space agency NASA.
At the time of writing, Envirosuite shares are hurtling 9.09% higher to 18 cents.
What's driving the Envirosuite share price higher?
In today's statement, Envirosuite advised it has been contracted by NASA to participate in the X-59 Community Response Testing project.
Currently, NASA is designing and building the X-plane to bring back supersonic travel to the aviation market.
Almost two decades ago, the Concorde – a British and French supersonic passenger airliner– retired from the skies. The turbojet had a maximum speed of more than 2,100 kilometres per hour and could fly from New York to London in less than 3 hours.
However, noise became a big issue with the jet releasing a supersonic boom when passing the sound barrier. If this occurred over residential areas, it would leave windows broken in many homes. Hence, the Concorde only ever reached supersonic speed over the ocean before it retired in 2003.
NASA's revolutionary X-59 program aims to bring back supersonic flight, specifically for the United States travel market. It believes it has found a solution with its X-59 prototype which will reduce the sound to a "gentle thump".
If successful, this could open the door to domestic supersonic travel worldwide.
As such, Envirosuite has been awarded a contract to focus on addressing and managing noise for the X-59 program. The agreement is based on an 8-year period of performance.
Under the deal, Envirosuite will provide NASA with a software platform to capture, process and visualise data from low-sonic boom flight tests. This will enable NASA and members of the testing team to review the low-sonic booms produced in real-time.
The contract is estimated to generate a minimum revenue of around $750,000 to Envirosuite.
The first phase of the project is expected to run until the end of 2023.
Management commentary
Envirosuite CEO Jason Cooper said:
We're privileged to have been selected as part of the consortium for this exciting and cutting-edge project with HMMH [consortium leader Harris Miller Miller & Hanson Inc.] and NASA. This project represents new opportunities in the innovative area of aerospace, along with the future of Aviation. Our experienced team look forward to being part of this and bringing the X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology aircraft to the skies.
Despite today's gain, the Envirosuite share price has lost roughly 6.5% in value over the past 12 months.
