NASA's F/A-18B mission support aircraft 852 was photographed flying over the high desert near the Tehachapi Mountains northwest of Mojave, CA.
ED12-0306-10
Project: Farfield Investigation of No Boom Threshold (FaINT)
NASA’s F/A-18B mission support aircraft 852 was photographed flying over the high desert near the Tehachapi Mountains northwest of Mojave, CA. The aircraft flew a series of low-supersonic, high-altitude flight profiles during the FaINT flight research project at NASA Dryden. A major objective of the effort was to investigate the acoustic phenomena that occur at the audible edge of a sonic boom carpet, including the transition and shadow zones. A NASA F-18B aircraft made supersonic passes such that its sonic boom carpet transition zone would intersect a linear 60-microphone, 7500-ft long array.
Learn more.September 7, 2012
NASA / Jim Ross