NASA has issued grants to five universities to help develop education plans for the community overflight phase of the agency’s Quesst mission, which aims to demonstrate the possibility of supersonic flight without the typical loud sonic booms. The awards will focus on engaging with students and educators in the communities that NASA will eventually select for overflights.
The grants provide each university with $40,000 to develop science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) plans for those Quesst community overflights. According to NASA, “This will help ensure communities are accurately informed about this phase of Quesst and what involvement in the mission will look like for their community.”
The selected institutions are Carthage College, Kenosha, Wisconsin; Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia; University of Puerto Rico, San Juan; and University of California, San Diego.
The results of these grants aim to enable students to inform those communities that are selected for overflights about the purpose of the research. Overflights of various communities across the country will be conducted by the agency’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft. The objective of the X-59 is to fly faster than the speed of sound while producing only a quiet sonic “thump.” After these flights, data will be gathered about what people below heard.