NASA are working on some pretty cool stuff at the moment and they’re getting results.

Last year they successfully landed a Mars Rover, and almost perfected the world’s nerdiest handshake.

Keep trying guys, you’ll get it eventually.

What you might not know is that NASA doesn’t only work on space projects. They’ve also been working on a jet that flies faster than the speed of sound without producing a sonic boom, reports CNN.

Along the way, they’ve captured some epic pictures:

Using newly upgraded air-to-air photographic technology that took 10 years to develop, NASA’s ethereal images show for the first time the interaction of shockwaves from two supersonic planes in flight.

The images depict two T-38 supersonic jets from the US Air Force during a test flight from the research center at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

“What’s interesting is, if you look at the rear T-38, you see these shocks kind of interact in a curve,” Neal Smith, a research engineer at NASA, said.

“This is because the trailing T-38 is flying in the wake of the leading aircraft, so the shocks are going to be shaped differently. This data is really going to help us advance our understanding of how these shocks interact.”

Here’s a summary of the info if you want a quick overview of how it all works:

If you really want to get your science  nerd on, you can join the guys from NASA EDGE here for their discussion on, and footage of, the low-boom flight demonstration last year:

Very cool.

[source:cnn]