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Boom Supersonic, a small company based in Colorado, broke the sound barrier on Jan. 28 over the Mojave Desert using its planned civilian passenger airliner named the Overture, according to the Live Science website. This is the first private, independent company to achieve this goal with a plane designed for passenger use. Previous airliners that had broken the sound barrier were designed through government-supported efforts: Concorde, backed by the governments of U.K. and France, and the Soviet-supported Tupolev Tu-44.

The test flight of the Overture only lasted 34 minutes and most of the tests took place at subsonic speeds. However, the performance was impressive, rocketing to an altitude of 34,000 feet (10,300 meters) in just a few minutes in an extremely steep climb, and eventually testing the integrity of the craft’s aerodynamics at Mach1.122 (about 844 mph or 1,358 km/h). Other tests included high-speed maneuvers to test its handling and stability. The next test flight could be as early as a few weeks. Boom Supersonic is planning to take photos during the flight that will “visualize shock waves” using a process known as Schlieren photography.

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