Photos: The blended-wing design of Boeing's X-48B

In the design of Boeing's experimental X-48B aircraft, it's hard to know where the fuselage stops and the wings begin. Fittingly, the company is describing the craft as a "blended wing body," or BWB--and it's careful to point out the differences between this new shape and older, similar notions of the flying wing. That's partly because of the way the wings and fuselage come together, and partly because the BWB design allows for more volume inside, Boeing says.

In this picture from August 14, an X-48B prototype is flying over Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards Air Force Base in California, in its fifth trip aloft since its debut flight in mid-July. Following a sixth flight not long ago, the aircraft is now on hiatus till sometime in October as Boeing--and partners NASA and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory--perform maintenance, update software and flight control systems, and evaluate data from the first round of flights. Among the physical changes under way: engineers are taking off removable leading edges with extended slats and replacing them with slatless leading edges, NASA said.

Caption text by Jonathan Skillings, staff writer, CNET News.com