by It is a compact airframe, less than 30 feet long and under 10 feet high, with a pair of sharp wings and a rounded bulldog-like nose. But despite its small size – it looks like a miniature version of the space shuttle – the Pentagon’s most mysterious spacecraft, known as the X-37B, has achieved great fame.
Is it the Pentagon’s secret weapon? Is it stealthy? Does it sneak up with satellites? What exactly does it do in space? And why is it up there for so long?
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The Pentagon will not say. And the veil of secrecy continues over the X-37B before its launch Sunday at 8:14 pm Eastern on its seventh mission. But this time there are some hints that at least something is different.
The drone, which flies without anyone on board, is to be launched for the first time on SpaceX’s mighty Falcon Heavy, which is more powerful than the rockets it has launched in the past. As a result there is speculation that the mission will be in a much higher orbit, which seems to be the case according to recent documents. SpaceX won the $130 million contract for the 2018 launch.
However, it is not known what he could do in that higher orbit.
The mission has “a wide range of test and experiment objectives,” the official Pentagon statement said. “These tests include operating the reusable spaceplane in new orbital regimes, testing future space domain awareness technologies.”
The reference to “awareness of space domains” could mean that it will be keeping an eye on other satellites, watching out for threats. A better understanding of what’s going on in the vastness of space – where enemy spacecraft are and what they’re doing – is a key mission of the US Space Force. “Our space systems are threatened by a growing variety of anti-satellite capabilities, and the joint force is threatened by increasingly sophisticated space-based systems intended to target the joint force,” said Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations for the Space Force. in a statement to Congress earlier this year.
At least one part of the mission is known. The vehicle will “expose plant seeds to the harsh radiation environment of long-duration spaceflight” in an experiment for NASA. In the past, the Pentagon has also used the X-37B to test some of its cutting-edge technologies, including a small solar panel designed to convert the sun’s energy into microwaves, a technology that could one day allow reversing conserved energy in space. to Earth.
The Boeing-built X-37B was also used to deploy small satellites, but what they did too was a mystery.
“The US government is in this weird place where they brag publicly about how great and cutting-edge it is, but they won’t provide any information about it,” said Brian Weeden, director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation. , a think tank. .
Much of the speculation about the vehicle is probably wrong, he said. Until now, his reputation is mainly connected to “his mystique,” he said, although it seems clear that “he is doing something that the Pentagon feels is very important.”
That said, “it has almost zero potential as an orbital weapon system to attack targets on the ground,” Secure World says in a fact sheet about the program. It is likely to be used for the purposes the Pentagon says it is being used for: “testing of reusable space launch vehicle technologies (such as guidance and thermal protection) and in-orbit testing of new sensor technologies and hardware satellite to reduce risk,” according to Secure World.
That hasn’t stopped other nations, especially China, from targeting the X-37B as an example of the US space weaponry. “They can’t stop talking about this thing as a weapon, and as a symbol of American hegemony in space,” Weeden said.
China also has a secret reusable space plane, the Shenlong, which has flown two missions so far. The last one touched down in May after spending 276 days in orbit. Like the X-37B, it is highly secretive, and no photos of it have been released publicly. But he seems inspired by his American cousin, Weeden said. The Chinese idea is that “if the Americans think it’s important, maybe we should invest in it,” Weeden said.
If Sunday’s X-37B mission is anything like previous ones, the spacecraft could be in space for a while. Its first flight, launched in 2010, lasted 224 days. Since then, each mission has gotten longer, and when it touched down at Cape Canaveral after its final flight in November 2022, it had been in orbit for 908 days. In total, the space plane has spent more than 10 years in space, allowing the Pentagon to get all kinds of data on how various components perform in space for long periods of time.
“It has been a great test bed and experiment vehicle for many years,” said Gen. David Thompson, deputy chief of space operations for the Space Force, during a forum earlier this year. “Let me tell you, you’re just starting to see some of the exciting things we have planned for the X-37.”
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