SECRET U.S. SPACEPLANE HAS RETURNED TO EARTH
MYSTERIOUS MISSION STOKES SPECULATION
One of the Pentagon’s best-kept secrets has returned to Earth after spending two years in space, according to the U.S. air force. However, any results or data from the mission are, well, a secret.
The X-37B spaceplane landed on an air strip at NASA’S Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:51 a.m. local time on Sunday, after spending 780 days in orbit, wrote the U.S. air force in a jargon-heavy statement.
The mission marked the fifth time the plane — the size of a small bus — has been launched into orbit, under the so-called Orbit Test Vehicle program, since it was first launched in 2010.
Yet no one outside of the U.S. air force appears to know anything about why it was launched, or what it does while in space.
According to the statement, the X-37B program “performs risk reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies.” As the plane is unmanned, it is also possible to test technologies in a “long-duration space environment,” it adds.
“The X-37B continues to demonstrate the importance of a reusable spaceplane. Each successive mission advances our nation’s space capabilities,” said Barbara Barrett, air force secretary.
“This spacecraft is a key component of the space community,” X-37B program manager Lt. Col. Jonathan Keen is quoted as saying. “This milestone demonstrates our commitment to conducting experiments for America’s future space exploration.”
Past flight announcements have offered similarly vague details, describing tests for thermal protection systems, reusable insulation, navigation and control, autonomous orbital flight, re-entry and landing.
According to a 2018 statement, NASA initiated the X-37 program in 1999 to develop two vehicles — an Approach and Landing Test Vehicle (ALTV) and an Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), with the help of Boeing. Prior to 1999, Boeing had been contracted to build X-40, a larger version of the X-37. After its first test in 1998, that vehicle successfully conducted seven flights in 2001 before touching down permanently.
By 2004, control of the X-37 program shifted to the defence research agency DARPA, which in turn developed the ALTV — named X-37A — by 2006. That spacecraft, scaled down from the X-40 model, was not designed to go into space but rather to test unmanned, autonomous landing hardware and software.
In November 2006, the U.S. air force announced it would develop the next phase of the vehicle, named X-37B, to complete the mission’s overall purpose of sending an unmanned craft into space.
The X-37B was launched on April 22, 2010, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and returned to Earth in December of the same year. By then, work had already begun to develop a second X-37 vehicle, which made its maiden launch in March 2011. Since 2010, the air force has successfully flown five X-37B missions, spending a total of 2,865 days in orbit.
A sixth launch is planned for 2020.
While launch and return dates, along with photos, are on public record, any other data from the missions have been termed as classified information. The secrecy has stoked speculation and even criticism that the U.S. might be concealing satellite deployment from the United Nations Register of Outer Objects.
In 2017, the Secure World Foundation, a space non-profit, released a report that ranked the likely results of all suggested X-37B mission scenarios. The most likely, according to the report, is that the spacecraft is an “on-orbit sensor platform and technology test bed,” in line with the information stated by the air force. It could also be a “deployment platform for ORS (surveillance) satellites.”
The least likely scenario is that the spacecraft can be used as a weapon or a weapons carrier because of how slowly it returns to Earth as well as the fact that there are only two such vehicles in use.