As a meteorological engineer at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, Patricia Van Buren ’14 is part of one of the agency’s most ambitious projects: the X-59 aircraft.
Patricia Van Buren ’14
“NASA is testing an aircraft, X-59, to demonstrate quiet supersonic flight,” Van Buren said. “Data from this research is expected to enable the development of future commercial supersonic aircraft, making it possible for faster-than-sound travel over land. Right now, a flight from Rochester, New York, to Los Angeles, California, is nearly five hours. With supersonic flight, it could be two to three hours.”
The challenge? Sound.
“To travel that fast, you’re going to break the sound barrier, and people don’t want to hear sonic booms several times a day with airplanes flying overhead,” Van Buren said. “The whole point of the X-59 aircraft is to minimize the sonic boom.”
NASA’s Quesst mission aims to prove that quiet supersonic flight is possible. The X-59 is designed to reduce the loudness of sonic booms to a “thump” that is far less disruptive to people on the ground. Van Buren’s role is to gather atmospheric data to determine how different atmospheric factors affect the sound waves that travel through the air.
“My first project was a dry run to prepare for how we will measure the noise generated by the X-59. An F-15B aircraft served as a stand-in, making multiple passes over the Mojave Desert and creating the sonic boom. We set up microphones and weather stations across the desert and launched weather balloons to learn about the makeup of the atmosphere and how the supersonic waves travel through it,” Van Buren said. “When that dry run was in full force, I was out in the field nearly every other day for two months.”
With only five meteorologists on hand, Van Buren focuses on weather forecasting for NASA operations when she’s not working in the field.
“We forecast for the safety of our operations on the ground and in the air, especially because some of the aircraft sensors can’t fly through certain conditions like moisture,” she said. “Every project is different, so you have to learn the purpose of the aircraft, its mission, and how the weather could impact it.”
Van Buren was originally an accounting major, but after taking her first meteorology course at Brockport as an elective, she switched majors and never looked back.
“I still have all of my class notes from 10 years ago in my office.”
Patricia Van Buren
“Dr. Rochette was able to put me on the right path to graduate on time. It’s a very tight-knit major and department,” she said. “I still have all of my class notes from 10 years ago in my office.”
Her advice to current students: “Apply for a NASA Pathways internship.” It’s not just for astronauts or engineers. “NASA has a bunch of branches—within aeronautics and aerospace, there’s research that needs to be done. Our summer interns helped a lot with instrumentation for the dry run,” Van Buren said.
What’s next for Van Buren? The X-59 aircraft’s first flight.
“I’m excited for its first flight,” Van Buren said. “After acoustic validation, the X-59 will fly over communities across the nation, and residents will be asked to provide data measuring their perception of the sound produced by the aircraft. The meteorology team will be traveling to release weather balloons and collect more atmospheric data alongside these tests.”