Posted on Monday, December 28 2009 @ 6:43 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
National Geographic published a list of ten amazing space pictures, you can check it out
over here. Pictured below is a cone of moisture surrounding the upper half of NASA's Ares I-X rocket during its suborbital test flight in October:
Such "sonic boom clouds" can occur when aircraft fly fast enough to cool the air around them, causing moisture in the air to condense. Shortly after launch, the Ares I-X rocket was traveling at more than four times the speed of sound.
The rocket's six-minute, U.S. $450-million flight was designed to help NASA refine its plans for Ares I, the next-generation craft that--combined with the Orion crew capsule--is slated to replace the aging space shuttle as the U.S.'s primary means of ferrying humans and cargo into space.
