After 225 days in orbit the Air Force’s mysterious X-37B space plane touched down today at 1:16 am local time at California’s Vandenberg Air Force
Space plane program manager Lt. Col. Troy Giese says that “today’s landing culminates a successful mission” which “completed all the on-orbit objectives.” But the Air Force has been consistently vague about what that mission really was; for a while, military personnel claimed they didn’t even know when the X-37B was coming back to Earth.
With a payload bay roughly the size of a pickup-truck bed, the 29-foot-long robot could carry sensors or even weapons. Its maneuverability — amateur skywatchers tracked the X-37 making four major course-changes — means it could sneak up on and hijack other nations’ satellites. Or it could be a mere flying laboratory, as the Air Force insists.
“I still stand by my initial assessment that its primary mission was likely to be test-flight of new sensors or satellite hardware,” says Brian Weeden from the Secure World Foundation. He adds that he thinks the X-37 has “pretty much zero utility as a ’space bomber’” or satellite-killer.
One thing is clear: the X-37 saga has just begun. The Air Force has commissioned Boeing to build a second X-37, to enter service next spring. And the first X-37 could find itself back in orbit in short order, as well.
After all, one of the advantages of airplane-style spacecraft is their reusability. Lacking disposable stages like a rocket capsule, they don’t have to be pieced back together post-mission. Just check out the electronics and the plumbing, inspect the skin for cracks and, in theory, you’ve got a spaceworthy vehicle.
“It will be interesting to see how fast they can turn the X-37B around for another launch,” Weeden says. “That is going to be a key indicator of how ‘operational’ the technology is and its value to supporting the war-fighter.”
Even if its initial tests were a bust and it proves incapable of quickly returning to space, the X-37 has already changed the world. The vehicle’s mere existence threatened to spark a minor space race between the U.S. and rival powers. And the X-37 boosted the ambitions of commercial space-launch advocates who are wheedling NASA for access to their own reusable, low-orbit space plane.
Photo: USAF
See Also:
- Air Force Launches Secretive Space Plane; ‘We Don’t Know When It’s Coming Back’
- Report: Secret Space Plane Likely an Orbiting Spy
- Secret U.S. Space Plane May Be Too Mysterious
- The Real Story Behind NASA’s Resurrected Space Plane
- Russian Generals Want Their Space Weapons, Too
Authors: David Axe