A little over a month after a civilian jet broke the sound barrier, Boom Supersonic and NASA have released a photo of one of the aircraft’s historic test flights over the Mojave Desert.
The image released Monday shows the XB-1 aircraft, which Boom Supersonic said is the “first civil supersonic jet made in America,” during its second supersonic flight on Feb. 10. The company said it partnered with NASA using a technique known as Schlieren photography to visualize what can’t be seen with the naked eye.
“This image makes the invisible visible,” Boom Supersonic founder and CEO Blake Scholl said in a news release.
NASA/Boom Supersonic Handout
Chief test pilot Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg had to make sure XB-1 was in the right place at the right time to allow NASA’s team on the ground to photograph it in-flight as it eclipsed the sun, the Colorado-based company said. Crews used telescopes with special filters that can detect air distortions like shock waves to capture the image.
The photo was taken during the XB-1’s 13th overall test flight, according to the company, but it was the second time it flew at supersonic speed, this time reaching Mach 1.18, or 772 mph, Boom Supersonic said.
Scholl said that the XB-1 didn’t make an audible sonic boom that typically occurs when an aircraft is flying faster than the speed of sound. The captured data suggests that, at certain speed and atmospheric conditions, the sonic boom refracts in the atmosphere and never reaches the ground. The finding may lead the way for supersonic commercial flights without sonic booms, the company said in its news release.
NASA first visually captured supersonic shock waves in 2019 after a decade of research. The technology was developed in part to aid the space agency in testing its own supersonic aircraft, X-59.
“Knowing where the air is really moving tells you a lot about what your vehicle is doing, how efficient it is, and how you can make it better,” Ed Haering, principal investigator for the Schlieren photography, said in a 2023 NASA news release.
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