Nasa has awarded $2.3m of grants for research projects to address technical challenges associated with supersonic cruise aircraft.

Selected under Nasa’s Commercial Supersonic Technology project, the universities and industry will jointly develop technologies to tackle sonic booms and high-altitude emissions from supersonic aircraft.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology will work on a four-year project to study the impact of supersonic cruise aircraft in the stratosphere, and will receive $1.2m grant.

Rockwell Collins, Honeywell, Wyle Laboratories, GE Global Research, and Fidell Associates have been granted $698,000, $686,000, $1.2m, $599,000 and $393,000 funds for their respective projects that will support future supersonic civil transports.

Rockwell Collins is working on a display technology to provide a visual representation of sonic booms over the Earth’s surface. The display’s software will compute best flight paths using ground-based and aircraft-measured weather information.



"Universities and industry will jointly develop technologies to tackle sonic booms and high-altitude emissions from supersonic aircraft."

Honeywell’s two-year investigation is focused on developing a pilot interface to mitigate sonic boom noise.

Over three years, Wyle Laboratories will evaluate the influence of turbulence on shaped sonic booms, while GE Global Research will look at low noise integration concepts and propulsion technologies.

Meanwhile, Fidell Associates will work on reducing risk aspects for future testing, with a low-boom flight demonstration vehicle.

Applied Physical Sciences and University of California have also received funding to study waveforms and sonic boom perception, and response risk reduction and quiet nozzle concepts for a low-boom aircraft, respectively.

Nasa said the awards to Applied Physical Sciences and Fidell Associates are guaranteed only for the first year, and that one of the projects will receive around $450,000 a year for a further two years.

Image: Nasa supersonic flight research technology. Photo: courtesy of Nasa.