NASA to Use Crystal Instruments-Built Ground Recorder to Collect Sonic Thump-Related Data

NASA will use a ground recorder developed by Crystal Instruments to measure an aircraft’s sonic thumps in the Mojave Desert in California.

The Crystal Instruments Ground Recording System will allow NASA to collect spectral, time and waveform data related to sonic thumps and sonic booms and install algorithms and custom software to carry out operations to facilitate analysis, the agency said Monday.

The space agency will field an aircraft from NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center in California to simulate the X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology's acoustic validation phase as part of the Carpet Determination in Entirety Measurements flight series and then will gather lessons from the CarpetDIEM tests to inform possible modifications that could be integrated into the final design of CI-GRS.

“This ground recording system will be more robust and ruggedized when it comes to its operational use, and that’s what we anticipate, with the ability to deploy for several days at a time,” said Larry Cliatt, tech lead for the acoustic validation phase of the NASA’s Low-Boom Flight Demonstration mission. 

“These will also incorporate two-way communications so that they can be deployed over a large area when the X-59 flies over communities starting in 2024, so the ultimate total of 175 of these can be controlled from a single remote host,” Cliatt added.

NASA expects the next round of CarpetDIEM flights to occur in late 2021.