It depicts a U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School T-38C passing in front of the sun at supersonic speed, generating shockwaves.
The photograph was taken by NASA for research purposes using a modern version of schlieren imagery, a 150-year-old German photography technique, used to visualize supersonic flow phenomena with full-scale aircraft in flight.
According to NASA, the results of the research will help engineers to design a quiet supersonic transport aircraft.
David Cenciotti is a freelance journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written four books.
It seems a pretty standard intercept. What’s interesting is the fact that you can see it from the cockpit of a Russian Flanker. Close encounters between Russian fighters and U.S. spyplanes and bombers (and viceversa) […]
Here below you will find the Top 5 blog posts of year 2012. Actually, these are not the five articles that got most pageviews: in fact, among the most read ones, I’ve picked those that […]
Head-on take off by a “Bone” deployed to Qatar to fight ISIS B-1’s take offs are always impressive. B-1’s take off at Al Udeid, west of Doha, in Qatar, where the U.S. Air Force has […]
