NASA

NASA says a new quiet supersonic passenger jet it has been designing alongside Lockheed Martin would create a soft “thump” heard on the ground rather than the bone-rattling sonic boom that led to the original U.S. prohibition on supersonic flight over land back in the early 1970s. NASA cleared a “significant milestone” last Friday with […]

While there’s been uptick in news about supersonic aircraft this year, FAR Part 91.817 is seldom mentioned. That regulation prohibits operation of a civil aircraft over the Continental United States or at a U.S. airport when the aircraft is capable of true airspeeds greater than Mach 1, the speed of sound. The regulation also represents […]

Powering jet engines with a 50-50 blend of biofuel and aviation fuel reduces particle emissions in their exhaust by as much as 50 to 70 percent, according to a NASA-led study recently published in the journal Nature. Part of the agency’s Alternative Fuel Effects on Contrails and Cruise Emissions Study (ACCESS) data was collected on […]

Most U.S. pilots know there’s an FAR restricting a civil aircraft from exceeding the speed of sound over land thanks to the annoying boom that people on the ground experience when one flies nearby. Over the next few months, NASA believes successful wind-tunnel testing of a 9 percent scale model of Lockheed Martin’s X-plane, at […]