In support of the ongoing effort by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA ) to bring supersonic commercial travel to the public , NASA , in partnership with other industry organizations , conducted a flight research experiment to analyze acoustic propagation at the lateral edge of the sonic boom carpet . The name of the effort was the Farfield Investigation of No - boom Thresholds ( FaINT ) . The research from FaINT determined an appropriate metric for sonic boom waveforms in the transition and shadow zones called Perceived Sound Exposure Level , established a value of 65 dB as a limit for the acoustic lateral extent of a sonic boom 's noise region , analyzed change in sonic boom levels near lateral cutoff , and compared between real sonic boom measurements and numerical predictions .