Sonic booms are still a no-no most of the time, but NASA is seeking to build an airplane that makes more of a dull thump than the loud double crack that happens now when a jet goes supersonic.
In that effort, NASA has hit a milestone when two supersonic test jets flying in formation were captured on film from a third plane flying above them.
The imagery shows the interaction of the shockwaves coming off the jets.
The images were caught during another set of tests in NASA’s effort to build the X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology X-plane, also called the X-59 QueSST.
This image was part of a series of Air-to-Air Background Oriented Schlieren flights, or AirBOS, taken of two T-38 jets from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
In 2018, NASA had a series of tests in Florida out of Kennedy Space Center known as SonicBAT flights, or Sonic Booms in Atmospheric Turbulence.
For the new tests, the images were taken at around 2,000 feet above the supersonic jets flying about 30 feet from one another, the trailing jet about 10 feet lower than the lead.
“What’s interesting is, if you look at the rear T-38, you see these shocks kind of interact in a curve,” said Neal Smith, a research engineer with private company AerospaceComputing Inc., working out of NASA’s Ames Resarch Center. “This is because the trailing T-38 is flying in the wake of the leading aircraft, so the shocks are going to be shaped differently. This data is really going to help us advance our understanding of how these shocks interact.”
The images will play into the first demonstration flights for the X-59. NASA’s goal is to present data to U.S. and international bodies that could rework rules for supersonic flights over land.
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