Page 8 - Aerotech News and Review, Jan. 5 2018

SpaceX launch sparks UFO sightings
by Peter W. Merlin
special to Aerotech News
An early evening liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on Dec. 22 produced a spectacular aerial display that stopped traffic throughout much of Southern California and prompted many UFO sighting reports to emergency services officials and news agencies.
Ordinary citizens and celebrities from Santa Barbara to San Diego took to the phones and social media to ex- press wonder and concern as the rocket headed downrange, shedding its first stage and a nose fairing that protects the payload within Earth’s atmosphere.
Santa Monica resident Frances Tra- cy-Black was driving on Interstate 10 when she noticed the expanding rocket plume.
“Drivers all around me slowed to a crawl to watch it,” she said, adding that people started pulling over and getting out of their vehicles to watch and film the phenomenon. “It was wild,” she said, “I’ve never seen anything like it!” Another woman reported that her young daughter thought it was Santa Claus.
The reaction promoted both the Ven-
tura County Sheriff’s Department and Los Angeles County Fire Department to issue public statements assuring pan- icked citizens that there was no cause for alarm. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk didn’t exactly help matters when he posted on Twitter, “It was definitely aliens,” later posting a video of the launch with the caption, “Nuclear alien UFO from North Korea.”
In fact, the glowing vapor trails in the western sky just after sunset her- alded the launch and deployment of the fourth set of 10 Iridium NEXT communications satellites. SpaceX launched three earlier sets of satellites for Iridium Communications in Janu- ary, June and October as part of a $492 million contract. When completed, the constellation will ultimately comprise 81 spacecraft equipped with the Cer- tus next-generation communications platform as well as the Aireon aircraft tracking and surveillance system.
“In an historic first, this system will provide air traffic control organizations and aircraft operators that purchase the service with a real-time, global visibil- ity of ADS-B equipped aircraft,” ac- cording to SpaceX.
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Aerotech News and Review
January 5, 2018
Photographs by Peter W. Merlin
Seeing an X-plane’s sonic boom
When NASA’s next X-plane takes to the skies, it will produce some pretty cool images.
Thanks to the completion of a recent flight test series at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, the agency is a step closer to being able to visually capture the shockwaves of NASA’s future Low Boom Flight Demonstration aircraft, or LBFD.
In this schlieren image, an Air Force Test Pilot School T-38 is shown in a transonic state, meaning the aircraft is transitioning from a subsonic speed to supersonic. Above and beneath the aircraft, shockwaves are seen starting to form. These shockwaves propagate away from the aircraft and are heard on the ground as a sonic boom. NASA researchers use this imagery to study these shockwaves as part of the effort to make sonic booms quieter, which may open the future to possible supersonic flight over land.
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