Flight test engineers, it turns out, don't have a secret fascination with unicorns. The long, straight probes known as flight data booms that are attached to the pointy ends of flight test aircraft aren't for looks. They're meant to collect a wide variety of exceptionally accurate data. "Air data booms are much more than standard pitot-static probes," said Ed Haer-ing, an aerospace engineer at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California, where airplanes ranging from small UAVs to massive military transports undergo flight tests. "They measure many parameters beyond airspeed, and their measurements can be extremely accurate because they take place in the clean, undisturbed air in front of the aircraft."
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