Is it a secretive Pentagon weapon? Is it stealthy? Does it sneak as much as satellites? What precisely does it do in house? And why is it up there for therefore lengthy?
The Pentagon won’t say. And the veil of secrecy over the X-37B continues forward of its launch Sunday at 8:14 p.m. Japanese on its seventh mission. However this time there are some clues that at the least one thing is completely different.
The drone, which flies with out anybody on board, is to be launched for the primary time on SpaceX’s highly effective Falcon Heavy, which is extra highly effective than the rockets which have launched it prior to now. That’s led to hypothesis that the mission shall be in a a lot greater orbit, which seems to be the case in accordance with recent documents. SpaceX received the $130 million contract for the launch in 2018.
Nonetheless, what it would do in that greater orbit stays unknown.
The mission has “a variety of check and experimentation targets,” is the Pentagon’s official statement. “These checks embrace working the reusable spaceplane in new orbital regimes, experimenting with future house area consciousness applied sciences.”
The reference about “house area consciousness” may imply that will probably be maintaining a tally of different satellites, probably looking ahead to threats. Having a greater sense of what’s going on within the vastness of house — the place adversaries’ spacecraft are and what they’re doing — has turn into a key mission of the U.S. Space Force. “Our house methods are threatened by a wide range of rising antisatellite capabilities, and the joint power is threatened by more and more subtle adversary space-based methods supposed to focus on the joint power,” Gen. Likelihood Saltzman, the House Power’s chief of house operations, mentioned in a statement to Congress earlier this 12 months.
No less than one a part of the mission is understood. The car will “expose plant seeds to the tough radiation atmosphere of long-duration spaceflight” in an experiment for NASA. Prior to now, the Pentagon has additionally used the X-37B to check a few of its innovative applied sciences, together with a small photo voltaic panel designed to rework photo voltaic vitality into microwaves, a know-how that at some point may permit vitality harnessed in house to be beamed again to Earth.
The Boeing constructed X-37B has additionally been used to deploy small satellites, however what these did was additionally a thriller.
“The U.S. authorities is on this bizarre place the place they brag publicly about how wonderful it’s and leading edge, however won’t present any data about it,” mentioned Brian Weeden, the director of program planning on the Safe World Basis, a assume tank.
A lot of the hypothesis in regards to the car might be incorrect, he mentioned. For now, its fame is tied primarily to “its mystique,” he mentioned, although it appears clear that “it’s doing one thing that the Pentagon feels is essential.”
That mentioned, “it has near-zero feasibility as an orbital weapons system for attacking targets on the bottom,” Safe World says in a fact sheet about this system. In all probability, it’s used for the needs the Pentagon says it’s getting used for: “testing reusable house launch car applied sciences (reminiscent of steerage and thermal safety) and on-orbit testing of latest sensor applied sciences and satellite tv for pc {hardware} for danger discount,” in accordance with Safe World.
That has not stopped different nations, significantly China, from pointing to the X-37B for example of the U.S. weaponizing house. “They’ll’t cease speaking about this factor as a weapon, and the image of American hegemony in house,” Weeden mentioned.
China additionally has a secretive reusable spaceplane, the Shenlong, which has flown two missions thus far. The final one touched down in Could after spending 276 days in orbit. Just like the X-37B, it’s extremely secretive, and no pictures of it have been launched publicly. But it surely does look like impressed by its American cousin, Weeden mentioned. The Chinese language pondering is that “if the People assume it’s vital, then perhaps we should always make investments on this,” Weeden mentioned.
If Sunday’s X-37B mission is like earlier ones, the spaceplane could possibly be in house for some time. Its first flight, which launched in 2010, lasted 224 days. Since then, every 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 all, the spaceplane has spent greater than 10 years in house, which has allowed the Pentagon to achieve all kinds of knowledge about how completely different elements fare in house for prolonged durations.
“It has been a outstanding check mattress and experimentation car for a few years,” Gen. David Thompson, the House Power’s vice chief of house operations, mentioned throughout a discussion board earlier this 12 months. “I might inform you, you’re solely starting to see among the thrilling issues that now we have deliberate for the X-37.”
