Supersonic

NASA is moving ahead with its new X-planes program by awarding its first contract to design a prototype "low-boom" supersonic passenger jet to a team led by Lockheed Martin.

Purdue University's Professor Mark French and his graduate students, Craig Zehrung and Jim Stratton, have built an air gun that fires a ping-pong ball at over Mach 1.2 (900 mph or 1,448 km/h).