NASA has captured an image of a supersonic civilian jet breaking the sound barrier during a test flight over the Mojave Desert in California in February.
The photo, released Monday by the plane’s manufacturer, Boom Supersonic, shows the XB-1 aircraft during its second supersonic flight on Feb. 10.
The company said it is the “first civil supersonic jet built in America,” and that in January it also became the first independently developed jet to fly faster than the speed of sound.
Boom Supersonic partnered with NASA to capture the phenomenon invisible to the naked eye.
“NASA teams on the ground used Schlieren photography, a technique to visualize the shock waves resulting from XB-1 pushing through the air at supersonic speeds,” to take the photograph, the company said.
But capturing the image was no easy feat.
According to the manufacturer, taking Schlieren images requires “ideal conditions and timing,” as well as “exceptional” flying by the pilot.
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“Boom Chief Test Pilot Tristan Brandenburg positioned XB-1 at an exact time in a precise location over the Mojave Desert to enable NASA to photograph XB-1 flying in front of the sun, documenting the changing air density around the aircraft at speeds exceeding Mach 1,” the company says.
Its founder and CEO, Blake Scholl, also confirmed that the jet made no “audible boom” while in flight, adding that it will pave the way for coast-to-coast air travel to become 50 per cent faster.
NASA teams determined that it made no detectable sound by collecting data on XB-1’s acoustic signature at one location on the flight route to see if the jet breaking the sound barrier was audible from the ground.
The no-boom effect is achieved when the sound barrier is broken at a “high enough altitude, with exact speeds varying based on atmospheric conditions.”
On Feb. 10, the company announced that it will use data collected from XB-1’s test flights to bring “Boomless Cruise” to its supersonic airliner, Overture.
Boomless Cruise will enable Overture to fly at speeds up to Mach 1.3 without an audible boom, reducing U.S. coast-to-coast flight times by up to 90 minutes, Boom says.
