The technology at the heart of this shift is called pressure-sensitive paint, or PSP. It looks like ordinary paint, but it behaves more like a high-speed sensor spread over the entire surface of a model.
Engineers spray PSP onto a scale aircraft or rocket and then illuminate it with special lamps, usually UV. When air flows over the painted surface in a wind tunnel, the local pressure changes the way the paint fluoresces. Brightness shifts correspond directly to pressure variations.
PSP acts as a single, continuous pressure sensor wrapped around the whole aircraft, converting light into data with microsecond precision.
Instead of drilling dozens of tiny holes in a model and wiring it with pressure probes, researchers point high-speed cameras at the glowing surface. Software then translates each pixel into a pressure reading. Darker zones indicate higher pressure, lighter zones lower pressure or calmer flow.
This method gives engineers something they have long wanted but never truly had: a full, evolving map of how air loads are distributed across every part of a wing, fuselage or rocket body.
From lab curiosity to ultra-fast uPSP
Classic PSP has existed for years, but Nasa’s recent leap comes from an advanced version known as unsteady pressure-sensitive paint, or uPSP. The upgrade is less about chemistry
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