NASA moves forward with plans for supersonic planes that could fly from New York to London in 1.5 hours

• NASA asked private companies to figure out how to make commercial supersonic flight "a reality."
• Mach 2 to 4 planes, flying up to 3,045 mph, could be used on 50 established flight routes, per NASA.

NASA has reached another milestone in its plans to develop supersonic planes that could take passengers from London to New York in under 1.5 hours.

The agency announced Tuesday that Boeing and Northrop Grumman had been awarded contracts to develop roadmaps to make "Mach 2-plus travel a reality."

The companies, along with other industry partners, will develop concepts for planes that could reach up to 3,045 miles per hour — or up to Mach 4.

By comparison, modern-day aircraft travel up to roughly 600 miles per hour, per NASA. The Concorde, a discontinued supersonic jet, had a top cruise speed of about 1,340 miles per hour, or just above Mach 2.

NASA has determined that there is a passenger market for supersonic flights on about 50 existing commercial flight routes, per NASA.

The designs will be "really important" to NASA's advanced high-speed travel strategy, said Mary Jo Long-Davis, manager of NASA's Hypersonic Technology Project.

To make supersonic flight a reality, it needs to become quieter

The news comes as NASA begins testing its own supersonic plane.

NASA's X-59, developed with Lockheed Martin, was been designed to break the sound barrier while reducing the loud sonic boom to a "sonic thump," the agency said in a statement last month.

This is an important experiment because non-military supersonic flight over land has been banned by federal regulations for over 50 years in the US.

The ban, implemented in 1973, was "strongly influenced" by public surveys saying people were often startled by the loud sound and scared it could damage their property, per NASA.

A sonic boom can produce around 110 decibels of noise, about the same amount as an explosion or a thunderclap, according to NASA.

With its X-59, NASA wants to set new noise standards for supersonic flight industries by reducing "annoying sonic booms to something much quieter,'" said John Wolter, lead researcher on the X-59 sonic boom wind tunnel test.

NASA said the X-59 was moved out of its construction site and is now being subjected to ground tests to ensure it is safe for flight. The agency aims to fly the X-59 over select communities in 2025 to see if they find the noise acceptable.

"We're definitely ready to write a new chapter in the history of supersonic flight, making air travel over land twice as fast, but in a way that is safe, sustainable, and so much quieter than before," Peter Coen, NASA's mission integration manager for Quesst, a mission designed to reduce the noise of supersonic flight, said in a statement in April.