www.nasa.gov/

Volume 61 Number 7 September 2019

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

X-57 wing test page 4

Above, the X-57 distributed electric aircraft wing that will fly in the final configuration of the flight tests completed its 

testing at Armstrong. The test above researched the wing’s structure under stress of 120% of the design limit load. From 

left to right are Eric Miller, Tony Cash, Wesley Li, Shun-fat Lung and Ashante Jordan. Below, Wesley Li carefully 

watches real-time displays during wing proof load testing.

AFRC2019-0215-40 NASA/Lauren Hughes

X-57 wing tests complete

By Jay Levine

X-Press editor

As preparations continue for 

the X-57 Maxwell’s arrival at NASA 

Armstrong in October, testing on 

the wing that will be integrated into 

the final configuration of the piloted 

experimental aircraft is complete.

NASA’s first all-electric X-plane 

is intended to demonstrate the 

benefits electric propulsion may 

have for efficiency, noise and 

emissions. The aircraft set to arrive 

in the coming weeks will undergo 

verification, followed by taxi tests 

and experimental flight tests.

Armstrong pilots evaluated a 

standard P2006T Tecnam aircraft, 

considered the first of three 

configurations, in 2015 to compare 

with the electric versions. The 

aircraft set to arrive soon is X-57’s 

Modification II configuration, or 

Mod II, which just had a successful 

engine run earlier this year at Scaled 

Composite’s facility in California. 

Mod II, which is the X-57’s first 

configuration as an electric aircraft, 

features electric cruise motors where 

two combustion motors originally 

were located.

Following the Mod II phase, 

modifications III and IV will feature 

a high-aspect ratio wing, compared 

to the wider, standard wing from 

the Mod II phase. The Mod III/

IV wing was tested at Armstrong’s 

Flight Loads Laboratory to calibrate 

installed strain gauges for real-time 

loads monitoring and to verify the 

wing has met design specifications. 

The new wing will permit the 

repositioning of the electric 

cruise motors to the wingtips, 

which could significantly boost 

aircraft efficiency. The Mod IV 

configuration will include an 

additional 12 smaller high-lift 

motors to the two larger cruise 

motors on each end of the wing 

to produce distributed electric 

propulsion.

Built by Xperimental LLC in 

San Luis Obispo, the wing’s major 

structural load tests involved 

AFRC2019-0215-25 NASA/Lauren Hughes
X-Press September 2019

FIREX-AQ, page 8

 NASA/Joe Atkinson

The DC-8 is prepared for flight on the tarmac at Salina Municipal Airport 

shortly before takeoff.

DC-8, ER-2 support FIREX-AQ

 NASA/Franzeska Becker

By Samson Reiny

NASA’s Earth Science News Team

NASA’s DC-8 flying laboratory 

returned in early September from 

a two-month investigation into the 

life cycles of smoke from fires in 

the United States. The goal was to 

better understand smoke impact on 

weather and climate and provide 

information that will lead to 

improved air quality forecasting.

A joint campaign led by NASA 

and the National Oceanic and 

Atmospheric Administration 

(NOAA), Fire Influence on 

Regional to Global Environments 

and Air Quality (FIREX-AQ) is 

targeting broad questions about the 

chemical and physical properties of 

fire smoke, how it is measured and 

how it changes from the moment of 

combustion to its final fate hundreds 

or thousands of miles downwind. 

All of these have implications for 

public health.

“Ultimately, our goal is to 

better understand complex 

smoke-atmosphere interactions to 

improve the models for air quality 

forecasts, leading to increased 

accuracy and earlier notification, 

which are critical for communities 

downwind of fires,” said FIREXAQ co-investigator Barry Lefer, 

tropospheric composition program 

manager at NASA Headquarters 

in Washington. “That common 

purpose is what brought our 

agencies together several years ago 

when we started planning for this 

major effort.”

The first phase of the campaign 

centered on observing smoke from 

wildfires in the western United 

States. Equipped with state-ofthe-art remote sensing and in situ 

instruments, several aircraft based 

in Boise, Idaho, worked in unison 

to sample smoke plumes and 

their changing chemistry along 

with weather dynamics, tracking 

the plumes from combustion to 

destinations often several states 

away. 

The DC-8 based at Armstrong’s 

The NASA ER-2 is seen at its home base in Palmdale prior to deployment in 

support of the FIREX-AQ mission.

Building 703 in Palmdale – a 

long-distance-traveling scientific 

workhorse – was joined by two 

NOAA Twin Otters. NASA’s 

stratosphere-reaching ER-2 aircraft, 

also based at Armstrong, rounded 

out the science platforms. 

“Armstrong hosted 163 scientists 

from 31 institutions and the 

team with their instruments 

are the foremost experts in the 

fields of atmospheric chemistry 

composition detection,” said Chris 

Jennison, DC-8 mission manager. 

“The DC-8 flew 158 hours on 

23 data acquisition flights and 

engaged fires in 18 states from 

Washington to Florida. We also 

had 36 instruments suites installed 

on the aircraft for the mission.”

The ER-2 also was successful in 

completing 94% of its objectives.

“The ER-2 flew 12 flights 

in August to support FIREXAQ totaling 63.3 flight hours,” 

said Brain Hobbs, ER-2 project 

manager. “Missions covered 

eight states and included data 

collection over numerous wildfires 

in coordination with the DC-8, 

NOAA Twin Otters and satellite 

underpasses.”

In mid-August, the base of 

operations moved to Salina, Kansas, 

with flights directed at smoke 

from agricultural fires in the U.S. 

southeast. There are hundreds 

of these fires every year and they 

are closely situated to population 

centers, but their small size relative 

to satellite observational capability 

means they often go undetected by 

the satellites that provide the basis for 

many estimates of smoke emission 

amounts. The aircraft observations 

also are critical for understanding 

small-scale plume dynamics and 

their scientific impacts.

Smoke forecasts are based on 

several different forecast models that 

use satellite and other data, such 

as the amount of area burned in 

agricultural fires. NASA and NOAA 

satellites provide information, 

such as fuel type, fire intensity and 

burn scar area, along with wind, 

temperature and other weather 

variables that feed into models that 

predict smoke amount, direction 

and speed. 

Smoke chemistry starts with the 

fuel type, whether pine forests, oak 

forests or sage brush. In addition 

to gases such as carbon dioxide and 

carbon monoxide, burning will 

release different types and amounts 

of short-lived gases called volatile 

organic compounds (VOCs), which 

combine with other gases and 

sunlight to produce ground-level 

ozone – a gas that is harmful to 

humans and damages crops. Besides 

fuel type, the temperature of the burn 

also affects the resulting chemistry; 

in general, cooler, smoldering 

fires produce more VOCs, carbon 

monoxide and particulate matter, 

all of which are harmful to human 

health. Hotter, flaming fires produce 

less VOCs, carbon monoxide and 

total particulates, but more black 
at NASA

News

 X-Press September 2019

Turner 

named

Langley 

director

Armstrong painting unveiled

Aviation artist Stan Stokes, left ,and Clay Lacy, who commissioned the new painting of Neil Armstrong, spoke to Armstrong employees Aug. 5 in the ISF as part of the event that featured the unveiling of Stokes’ new portrait of Armstrong, 

featuring the center’s namesake during his test flight career prior to his acceptance as an astronaut and the first man to 

walk on the surface of the Moon.

AFRC2019-0168-30 NASA/Ken Ulbrich

An elementary school student “flew” the X-57 Maxwell inside NASA Armstrong’s 

simulator lab.

AFRC2019-0194-1 NASA/Lauren Hughes

Students tour NASA Armstrong

NASA Armstrong opened its 

doors to 28 students from Hacienda Elementary School on Sept. 

16. The California students are 

enrolled in the U.S. Department 

of Defense Starbase program, 

which focuses on elementary 

school students, primarily fifthgraders, to motivate them to explore science, technology, engineering and math. 

The group toured Armstrong, 

viewed an aircraft hangar and 

“flew” aircraft in the simulation 

lab. Students sat in simulated 

cockpits of the F/A-18 and the 

X-57 Maxwell. The X-57 Maxwell simulator in the photo represents what it would be like to fly 

NASA’s first all-electric X-plane.

AFRC2019-0180-42 NASA/Ken Ulbrich

Clayton Turner is Langley 

Research Center’s new director, 

following the retirement of 

David Bowles Sept. 30.

Turner had served as Langley’s 

deputy director since 2015. As 

Center director, Turner will lead 

a diverse group of about 3,400 

civil servant and contractor 

scientists, researchers and 

engineers.

Prior to his appointment 

as deputy director, Turner 

served as the associate director 

responsible for managing daily 

operations with a focus on 

center commitments. Turner 

also served as the director of 

the engineering directorate at 

Langley.

Turner began his career with 

NASA in 1990 by serving as 

a design engineer with the 

Lidar In-Space Technology 

Experiment project, where he 

spearheaded development of the 

laser aligning, bore-sight limit 

system. Over the next 29 years, 

Turner served in various roles 

with progressively increasing 

responsibility.

Turner has received many 

prestigious awards during 

his career including the 

Presidential Rank Award, the 

NASA Outstanding Leadership 

Medal, the NASA Exceptional 

Engineering Achievement 

Medal and the Paul F. Holloway 

Non-Aerospace Technology 

Transfer Award. 
X-Press September 2019 X-Press September 2019

From 

left Eric 

Miller, 

Walter 

Hargis and 

Ted Powers load 

wing tip 

shot bags 

during 

wing loads 

calibration testing 

while 

Larry 

Hudson 

observes.

AFRC2019-0191-58 NASA/Ken Ulbrich

X-57 wing... from page 1

loading the wing to 120% of the 

design limit load (DLL) in positive 

and negative load conditions. 

Additionally, during 120% DLL 

testing, the control surfaces were 

activated through their rotational 

range to determine if they would 

bind during the maximum expected 

flight deflections. Testing revealed 

that the control surfaces rotated 

freely through their rotational range.

The test fixture designed to secure 

the wing for testing included 30 

hydraulic actuators used to apply 

load to the wing, explained Eric 

Miller, Armstrong test conductor. 

In one test that took several hours 

to prepare, researchers positioned 

26 hydraulic actuators – 13 per 

side – with pads to push up on 

the wingtip. At the same time, 

the wingtips were attached to four 

additional actuators to simulate 

the inertia and thrust forces 

caused by the 134 pound cruise 

motors that will be on the final 

wing configuration.

Shot bags were used as ballast 

to create opposing forces to 

simulate the conditions of about 

3.4 g inertia that characterize a 

max design load case. These tests 

confirmed that the wing structure 

acts as predicted as it carries the 

approximately 3,000-pound 

aircraft through flight.

Larry Hudson, Armstrong 

Flight Loads Laboratory chief test 

engineer, said as is the case with 

many one-of-a-kind items the 

lab staff test, systems were set up, 

evaluated and monitored to ensure 

safety of the test and personnel. 

Testing on the X-57 wing marked 

the first time the lab has used a 

center-line reaction structure to 

perform a loads calibration test 

of an off-aircraft wing, where the 

entire wing was attached while 

loading the left and right sides of 

the wing. The reaction test fixture 

was conceptualized, designed and 

fabricated in about a year.

Wing testing also included 

weight and balance measurements 

and ground vibration testing. The 

weight and balance measurements 

determined the total mass and 

the center of gravity on the wing, 

which helped NASA verify that the 

aircraft will perform as expected 

during taxi and flight tests.

Ground vibration testing, or 

GVT, considers the engineering 

challenges of the relatively thin, 

high aspect-ratio wing, which 

could be prone to flutter and other 

vibration conditions in flight. The 

GVT lets NASA verify whether 

the structural properties built into 

the wing match what is expected 

for flight.

When the testing concluded, 

the wing underwent ultrasonic 

inspection to verify its health 

before it was shipped back to 

the project’s prime contractor, 

Empirical Systems Aerospace Inc. 

of San Luis Obispo, California, or 

ESAero.

The wing will be integrated 

into a nearly identical Tecnam 

P2006T fuselage that came from 

the same assembly line as the one 

used in the research, said Trevor 

Foster, vice president of ESAero. 

The integration will provide 

firsthand experience with wiring 

and flight instrumentation before 

the integration into the X-plane 

following the Mod II flights.

“It allows us to practice first and 

develop a plan,” Foster said. “We 

can work through many of the 

difficulties in advance to reduce 

risk and save time.”

As all of the components are 

coming together, the question of 

efficiency and function will soon 

be answered.

From left to right Jeff Viken, Wesley Li, Tony Cash, Larry Hudson, Kirsten Boogaard and Eric Miller conduct up load tests of the X-57 Modification III wing 

in the Armstrong Flight Loads Laboratory.

AFRC2019-0191-223 NASA/Ken Ulbrich

Ray Sadler, left, and Ronnie Haraguchi, right, load shot bags during loads 

calibration testing of the X-57 Modification III wing.

AFRC2019-0191-124 NASA/Ken Ulbrich

Jacob Roepel operates the load control system in preparation for up load testing 

at the Armstrong Flight Loads Laboratory.

AFRC2019-0191-144 NASA/Ken Ulbrich

Ray Sadler, left, and Walter Hargis, right, set load pads prior to up load testing 

on the X-57 Modification III wing.

AFRC2019-0191-178 NASA/Ken Ulbrich

Ted Powers, left, and Chris Mount, right, adjust load pad position, while Larry 

Hudson observes.

AFRC2019-0191-207 NASA/Ken Ulbrich
 X-Press September 2019 

Matt Kamlet

NASA Armstrong Public Affairs

NASA has successfully tested 

a large microphone array in 

California’s Mojave Desert as part of 

a flight series in preparation for the 

agency’s quiet supersonic X-plane, 

the X-59.

Flying at speeds faster than Mach 

1, the speed of sound, typically 

produces a loud sonic boom heard 

on the ground below. NASA’s X-59 

Quiet SuperSonic Technology 

X-plane, or X-59 QueSST, will fly 

over selected communities around 

the U.S. to demonstrate the ability 

to reduce the sonic boom to a quiet 

thump. The data from these flights 

will be turned over to the Federal 

Aviation Administration to possibly 

establish new sound-based rules for 

supersonic flight over land, possibly 

opening the door to future fasterthan-sound commercial cargo and 

passenger air travel.

Before these community 

overflights take place, however, the 

X-59 will first undergo an acoustic 

validation phase, during which 

NASA will deploy an approximately 

30-mile-long array of speciallyconfigured microphones to measure 

the X-59’s thumps to verify that 

they are as quiet as predicted.

The recently completed Carpet 

Determination In Entirety 

Measurements flight series, or 

CarpetDIEM, was NASA’s “first 

practice” for the X-59’s acoustic 

validation flights.

“The X-59 is designed to have 

quiet sonic booms that won’t be 

disturbing to the people, but first 

we actually have to go out and 

prove it,” explained Ed Haering, 

NASA’s principal investigator for 

CarpetDIEM. “NASA will do that 

by flying the aircraft and taking 

real measurements on the ground 

before we eventually fly it over 

communities, to make sure that it is 

as quiet as it should be.”

NASA will collect these sound 

measurements using a microphone 

array on the ground that covers 

Array tests part of X-59 prep

NASA tested a large microphone array in the Mojave Desert of California 

by flying an F/A-18 aircraft overhead at supersonic speeds, or faster than the 

speed of sound, producing sonic booms as part of the Carpet Determination 

In Entirety Measurements flight series, or CarpetDIEM. The booms were 

picked up by multiple microphone stations, spread out over a 30-mile area 

and capable of capturing up to 50,000 samples of sound data per second, to 

assess the booms’ sound levels.

EC02-0224-4 NASA/Jim Ross

Juliet Page, a physical scientist with the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, calibrates a microphone station during the CarpetDIEM flight 

series. The array featured high-fidelity microphones arranged in several configurations, giving researchers the ability to obtain accurate sound data and 

assess the loudness of the sonic booms, just as they will measure the quiet sonic 

thumps from the X-59.

AFRC2019-0181-18 NASA/Lauren Hughes

the entire width where the X-59’s 

quiet sonic thumps can be heard – 

a measurement area known as the 

“carpet.” The goal of CarpetDIEM 

was to practice deploying a largescale microphone array, and gain 

valuable lessons on the array’s ideal 

configuration, instrumentation, 

and logistics.

The test microphone array for 

this flight series was deployed 

along an area of the Mojave Desert 

near  NASA Armstrong from which 

NASA flew an F/A-18 aircraft to 

produce sonic booms under the 

designated supersonic corridor, 

which runs from Nevada toward 

Edwards.

“We chose this area of the Mojave 

Desert because it’s a nice, wide area 

under our high-altitude supersonic 

corridor, where we are able to fly 

our F/A-18s at supersonic speeds 

routinely,” said Haering. “Here we 

can learn how to best deploy a sensor 

array of this magnitude and the 

logistics of getting the hardware out 

here, using it for testing, and getting 

it back and logging the data.”

The array featured high-fidelity 

microphones capable of measuring 

50,000 samples per second, giving 

researchers the ability to obtain 

accurate sound data and assess the 

loudness of the sonic booms, just 

as they will measure the quiet sonic 

thumps from the X-59.

The flight series included engineers, 

researchers, and managers from NASA 

Armstrong and  NASA’s Langley 

Research Center  in Hampton, 

Virginia, as well as participants from 

the Volpe National Transportation 

Systems Center in Cambridge, 

Massachusetts, and graduate students 

and professors from Brigham Young 

University (BYU) in Provo, Utah. 

Participants were spread out to cover 

as much of the wide microphone 

array as possible.

“We have a series of microphones 

set up, and the various sites have 

different configurations,” explained 

Juliet Page, a physical scientist with 

Volpe. “We have microphones 

oriented in different configurations, 

including inverted, vertical, 

horizontal, some with different 

wind screens, and we’re evaluating 

the acoustic performance and the 

difference between the different 

configurations in preparation of the 

X-59.”

 “It’s cool to come out in the desert 

and just do all these measurements 

Microphone array, page 8
X-Press September 2019

Prandtl-D goes to Smithsonian

By Elvia Valenzuela

Armstrong Public Affairs

It’s not every day that a research 

aircraft may possibly change the 

way we build future planes. A new 

method of wing efficiency was 

discovered at NASA Armstrong by 

an aircraft built with a twisted wing 

and no tail.

After years of research, data 

collection and flight tests, NASA 

Armstrong’s Prandtl-D aircraft 

have demonstrated the ability to 

enhance controllability. One aircraft 

will be shipped to the prestigious 

National Air and Space Museum, 

Smithsonian Institution and 

another to the California Science 

Center in Los Angeles.

Preliminary Research 

Aerodynamic Design to Lower 

Drag, or Prandtl-D, is a student 

driven project that was introduced 

by former NASA Armstrong chief 

scientist Al Bowers. The goal of 

the Prandtl-D program is to gather 

data and test Ludwig Prandtl’s 1932 

paper that details the best solution 

for aircraft wing efficiency. Prandtl 

proposed a non-elliptical bellshaped curve by considering the 

strength of a wing rather than just 

the wingspan, which may produce a 

lift distribution with 11 percent less 

induced drag.

Traditional airplanes are 

designed to create an elliptical 

span load distribution, which 

means an aircraft’s wings do not 

produce lift evenly. Instead, when 

an airplane is flying there is a lift 

distribution across the wings that 

is carried in the shape of half an 

ellipse. The new span load lift 

distribution would distribute the 

lift in the shape of a bell curve due 

to its twisted wing.

NASA personnel selected groups 

of student interns each year from 

high school through graduate 

school that  conducted, tested and 

integrated research  on proverse 

yaw based on the 1932 paper. The 

aircraft was built with a twisted 

wing and no tail to test the theory 

of wing design optimization.

The flight tests and data collected 

for Prandtl-D1  demonstrated that 

the new span load gave the outer 

part of the wing a higher pressure on 

top and a lower pressure underneath 

causing a positive thrust. Data 

collected from Prandtl-D’s test 

flights demonstrated, by definition, 

proverse yaw.

Prandtl-D1 was requested by 

Russell Lee, chairman of the 

aeronautics department at the 

Smithsonian because it was the first 

aircraft in history to demonstrate 

and record data on proverse yaw. 

Mr. Lee plans to feature Prandtl-D1 

in an upcoming Innovations Gallery 

at the Smithsonian.

The California Science Center also 

submitted a request for Prandtl-D3, 

a larger scale model of Prandtl-D1 

that will be displayed in the near 

future.

The Prandtl program has become 

a high demand internship at NASA 

Armstrong for students across the 

nation. Since 2015 an average of 

1,500 students apply each year and 

only 20 students are selected for a 

Prandtl summer internship.

The data gathered by 

Prandtl-D led engineers to also 

develop  Prandtl-M, a concept for 

a Mars airplane that may collect 

and transmit valuable information 

back to Earth. Prandtl-M may be 

deployed and fly in the Martian 

atmosphere and capture high 

resolution topographic images as 

it glides down to inform scientists 

about the suitability of potential 

landing sites.

NASA Armstrong plans to 

continue the Prandtl program to 

gather research and data collection 

on proverse yaw through the nonelliptical bell-shaped span load 

distribution in the hopes to offer a 

new method of aircraft control and 

efficiency for future aeronautics.

NASA Armstrong conducted its first formation flight with the Preliminary 

Research Aerodynamic Design to Lower Drag (Prandtl-D) aircraft PrandtlD2 and Prandtl-3C.

AFRC2018-0310-06 NASA/Lauren Hughes

Prandtl-D1 will 

be displayed 

in an upcoming Innovations 

Gallery at the 

National Air and 

Space Museum, 

the Smithsonian 

Institution. From 

left are Robert 

“Red” Jensen, 

Logan Shaw, 

Christian Gelzer, 

Justin Hall, Al 

Bowers, Oscar 

Murillo, Brian 

Eslinger and 

Derek Abramson.

AFRC2019-0205-07 NASA/Ken Ulbrich
National Aeronautics and 

Space Administration

NASA Armstrong Flight 

Research Center

P.O. Box 273

Edwards, California, 93523-0273

Official Business

Penalty for Private Use, $300

Editor: Jay Levine, 

Logical Innovations, ext. 3459

Managing Editor: Steve Lighthill, NASA

Chief, Strategic Communications:

 Kevin Rohrer, NASA

Address: P.O. Box 273, 

Building 4800, MS 1422

Edwards, California, 93523-0273

Phone: 661-276-3449

FAX: 661-276-3167

The X-Press is published the first Friday of 

each month for civil servants, contractors 

and retirees of the NASA Armstrong Flight 

Research Center.

X-Press September 2019

FIREX-AQ... from page 2

carbon – an aerosol material with 

negative health consequences 

and additional climate warming 

potential.

“What’s burning matters, but 

how it’s burning matters maybe 

even more,” said Carsten Warneke, 

University of Colorado and NOAA 

mission scientist for FIREX-AQ. 

In 2016, he and his colleagues 

at NOAA burned different fuels 

at varying temperatures in the 

Missoula Fire Science Laboratory to 

gain a more detailed understanding 

of those factors. “Now, with 

this campaign, we’re taking our 

understanding from the laboratory 

to smoke from large fires happening 

in the field where the atmospheric 

dynamics change greatly over time 

and distance. From here, we can 

continue our work to improve the 

models.” 

Resolving those uncertainties 

in fuel chemistry also plays into 

another focus area for the campaign: 

plume injection height. Plume 

injection heights depend on 

a complex interaction of fire 

dynamics with the surrounding 

weather conditions and geography. 

Cooler fires, which more often 

occur at nighttime, inject smoke 

low in the atmosphere, where it 

poses a health risk to communities 

downwind. Hotter fires will inject 

smoke into higher altitudes, where 

it may travel farther laterally 

but is more likely to stay clear of 

populated areas.

Given the importance of their 

data to forecasting models, several 

satellites are used to retrieve plume 

injection heights. A few satellites 

with lidar instruments could be 

used to measure injection height 

directly, but these satellites do not 

observe the fires very frequently. 

Infrared instruments on other 

satellites are used to derive a 

measure of the fire’s intensity, 

which is in turn used to estimate 

injection height as well as the 

amount of smoke emitted, but 

clouds and other smoke cover 

often hinder detection.

The aircraft observed plume 

injection heights directly and 

compared them to other direct 

measurements such as fire 

radiative power, smoke chemistry 

and atmospheric conditions at 

varying altitudes. The observations 

provided a clearer understanding 

of plume height as a function of 

chemistry and other factors such 

as weather. “We’re growing the 

compendium of observations that 

can give us confidence that, when 

we estimate plume rise for the sake 

of smoke forecasting, we’re going 

to create a more accurate model 

that will lead to better air quality 

forecasts,” said NASA Langley’s 

Jim Crawford, FIREX-AQ NASA 

mission scientist. 

Longer-term improvement of air 

quality forecasting is a major focus 

of the campaign, but FIREX-AQ 

will also address broader impacts 

of smoke on weather and climate. 

For example, smoke particles can 

act to help initiate clouds. Smoke 

also affects how much sunlight 

clouds reflect back into the 

atmosphere. The optical properties 

of the smoke particles – how much 

light is absorbed and scattered by 

smoke – depends on their sizes and 

composition and determines their 

climate effects.

FIREX-AQ helped address one 

of the major uncertainties about 

fire emissions, namely the materials 

responsible for light absorption 

in smoke. Traditionally, all light 

absorption has been attributed to 

black carbon.

The improvements that FIREXAQ brings to understanding the 

satellite retrievals of aerosol properties 

over North America will also improve 

the value of those observations over 

other areas of the globe. 

and just kind of geek out with this 

technology,” Page added.

The data will now undergo 

analysis in preparation of furthering 

the technology for future flight tests.

CarpetDIEM was flown 

under  NASA’s Commercial 

Supersonic Technology project, 

which supports X-59’s Low-Boom 

Flight Demonstration mission 

through conducting supersonic 

flight research and technology 

development.

“The Commercial Supersonic 

Technology project is responsible 

for measuring and validating the 

level of the acoustic signature 

from X-59 prior to our planned 

community overflight testing. We 

want to be sure we are fully prepared 

for that challenge,” said CST 

project manager Lori Ozoroski. 

“This joint effort between NASA, 

Volpe, and BYU involved a number 

of early mornings and long, hot 

days to set up and record sonic 

booms generated by a NASA F/A18. Lessons learned from this test 

will next be applied to the second 

phase of the CarpetDIEM testing, 

currently planned for summer 

2020.”

The CST project seeks to 

develop the tools and technologies 

needed to overcome the technical 

barriers to practical commercial 

supersonic flight. If you ask Ed 

Haering, who has spent 25 of his 

35-year career at NASA researching 

sonic booms, overcoming barriers is 

what it’s all about.

“It’s been 70 years since Chuck 

Yeager broke the sound barrier,” 

explained Haering, standing under 

the same skies where, in 1947, 

Yeager became the first pilot to fly 

faster than the speed of sound.

“Now we’re trying to fix it.”

Microphone array... from page 6