Juliet Page, a physical scientist with the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, calibrates a microphone station during the CarpetDIEM flight series. The array featured high-fidelity microphones arranged in several configurations, giving researchers the ability to obtain accurate sound data and assess the loudness of the sonic booms, just as they will measure the quiet sonic thumps from the X-59.

One of multiple microphone stations used in the CarpetDIEM flight series, which gave researchers valuable lessons learned in preparations to deploy a similar array for the quiet supersonic X-59. Prior to community overflights, X-59 will undergo an acoustic validation phase, during which NASA will deploy the array of specially-configured microphones to measure the X-59’s thumps, in order to verify that they are as quiet as predicted.