Supersonic Jets Are Fast, But the Real Trick Is Something You Cannot See

Supersonic flight has long fascinated engineers and people in general because of its potential to traverse continents in a small fraction of current travel time, and although this remains a dream, the biggest challenge in supersonic flight has not been in designing high-powered engines, but in controlling how air reacts when an aircraft flies faster than sound. NASA researchers working on their X-59 aircraft have shown that perhaps supersonic flight’s future may not lie in more power, but in designing an aircraft whose shockwaves move differently through the atmosphere, as revealed in NASA’s research on its shockwave measurement systems.

This concept may sound a bit paradoxical, as one might think that speed is a matter of power, but it is not.

Sonic Booms as Pressure Waves

When an aircraft exceeds the speed of sound, it breaks through the sound barrier, meaning it goes faster than the speed of sound, which is about 767 miles per hour at sea level. As a result, it leaves behind a trail of shock waves in the air, and these shock waves merge to form an “N-wave,” a sharp rise and fall in pressure that people on the ground perceive as a sonic boom.


A sonic boom is not only a loud sound, but it also represents a measurable disturbance in the Earth’s atmosphere. Conventional supersonic aircraft, such as the Concorde, were known to create overpressure levels ranging from 1 to 2 pounds per square foot, sufficient to rattle windows and disturb animals, as explained in a physics of sonic boom article published by Government Executive.

These disturbances led the United States to ban routine civilian supersonic flights over land in 1973, a regulation set by the Federal Aviation Administration after early tests showed that repeated sonic booms were disruptive to communities.

Scientists explain that shockwaves form along a structure known as the Mach cone, which is a V-shaped region where disturbances propagate at the speed of sound relative to the aircraft. Traditional aircraft designs concentrate these waves into a single intense front, while elongated fuselage designs spread them out over time, which reduces the pressure change and reduces the sudden impact heard on the ground, according to an aerospace engineering publication by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

NASA’s X-59 and the Science of Shaping Air

NASA’s Quiet Supersonic Technology (Quesst) mission aims to test a different approach to supersonic flight by using aircraft geometry to reshape shockwaves before they reach the ground. The experimental X-59 aircraft, built in partnership with Lockheed Martin, is designed to travel at Mach 1.4 or roughly 925 miles per hour while producing only a soft “thump” instead of a thunderous boom.

The aircraft is about 99.7 feet long, with a wingspan of roughly 29.5 feet, and its design includes a needle-like nose and a top-mounted engine that helps redirect the shockwaves upward. NASA hopes this configuration will reduce the perceived sound level to about 75 perceived decibels, which is similar to distant traffic rather than an explosive boom, according to reporting by Aerospace Global News.

Flight testing will involve additional aircraft equipped with specialized shock-sensing probes that measure pressure changes around the X-59 during flight. NASA researcher Mike Frederick explained that the probes collect thousands of pressure samples each second in order to compare predicted airflow patterns with real measurements, stating that “a shock-sensing probe acts as the truth source, comparing the predicted data with the real world measurements,” according to NASA documentation.

The Math Behind the Shape

Behind these engineering decisions lies a body of aerodynamic mathematics that predicts how shock waves form and interact with the airflow. The strength of a shockwave depends strongly on the aircraft’s Mach number, and a simplified equation relates pressure changes to how much faster the aircraft is traveling than the speed of sound.

Research summarized in NASA historical aerodynamics publications shows that aircraft designers also rely on the area rule, developed by Richard Whitcomb, which distributes the aircraft's volume smoothly along its length to minimize wave drag and prevent concentrated pressure spikes.

The X-59 uses this concept by stretching the traditional N-wave into a smoother pressure pattern, reducing peak pressure by as much as ten to fifteen times compared with older supersonic designs. Wind tunnel experiments conducted with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency confirmed that computer models accurately predicted the airflow patterns around the aircraft during cruise conditions.

From Experiments to Future Policy

However, the X-59 project is not only meant to test the capabilities of the new technology but also to test how humans react to quieter sonic booms. From 2026, the plane will fly over different communities in the US as researchers survey how people react to the sound.

This is expected to provide new information to regulators who must decide whether to allow an amendment to the longstanding prohibition on flying overland at supersonic speeds. NASA and other aerospace research institutions argue that quieter shockwaves can nearly halve travel time between coasts without disturbing the ground.

The long road to changing supersonic travel is a testament to the idea that the future of travel may not be about building more powerful engines but about understanding the physics of invisible pressure waves in the sky.