Air Force Announces New X-37B Spacecraft Launch
The Air Force plans to launch a robotic spacecraft this month – which resembles a small space shuttle – to conduct technology tests in orbit and then glide home to a California runway.
owever, the Associated Press (AP) reports, the ultimate goal of the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle remains a mystery as it prepares to be launched April 19 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
"As long as you’re confused you’re in good shape," defense analyst John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, told AP’s John Antszak. "I looked into this a couple of years ago “” the entire sort of hypersonic, suborbital, scramjet nest of programs “” of which there are upwards of a dozen. The more I studied it the less I understood it."
The launch pinnacles the project’s journey from NASA to the Pentagon’s research and development arm and then to a secretive Air Force unit.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on the X-37 program, however the current total has still not been released.
Air Force spokeswoman Maj. Angie I. Blair released the launch date, landing sites and a fact sheet, saying that more information would soon be announced, but questions on cost and other matters were not answered.
The X-37B was built by Boeing Co.’s Phantom Works and is 9 1/2 feet tall, 29 feet long and weighs 11,000 pounds. It has a wingspan of about 15 feet, with two angled tail fins rather than a single vertical stabilizer.
The craft will launch like a satellite, housed in a fairing atop an expendable Atlas V Rocket, and deploy solar panels to provide electric power in orbit.
The Air Force released only a general description of the mission objectives, which were testing of guidance, navigation, control, thermal protection and autonomous operation in orbit, re-entry and landing.
The length of the mission is unknown but the Air Force said the X-37B could stay in orbit for 270 days. The craft’s primary landing site will be northwest of Los Angeles at coastal Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Peter A. Wilson, a senior defense research analyst for the RAND Corp. yold AP that the significance of the craft is unclear because the program has been around for so long.
"From my perspective it’s a little puzzling as to whether this is the beginning of a program or the end of one," Wilson told AP on Friday in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C.
Wilson said that as NASA anticipated the end of the shuttle, the X-37B was viewed as a working prototype of the next-generation design of a fully reusable spacecraft. However, the space agency lost interest and the Air Force picked it up.
"It’s viewed as a prototype of a vehicle that could carry small payloads into orbit, carry out a variety of military missions and then return to Earth," he said.
According to the Air Force’s statement, the X-37B program is now being used "to continue full-scale development" and orbital testing of a long-duration, reusable space vehicle.
Wilson said he sees the upcoming launch as "a one-shot deal."
He said he is not sure if there is a classified portion of the program, but there is no evidence of a second vehicle being built to follow the prototype. A prototype in aerospace typically remains a test vehicle used to prove and improve designs for successive operational vehicles.
According to Wilson, to fully function as a completely reusable launch system there would also have to be development of a booster rocket that is capable of landing itself back on Earth to be reassembled with the spacecraft.
Wilson said the usefulness of payloads like military satellites is in question, which would undercut the need for the launch system.
The X-37B is now the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office’s project. Its mission is to speed up development of combat-support systems and weapons systems.
According to an Air Force fact sheet, the office has worked on several things since it started in 2003, including upgrading the air defenses around the nation’s capital as an anti-terrorism measure and assessing threats to U.S. combat operations.
The X-37 was a larger version of the Air Force X-40, which was a concept for a "Space Maneuver Vehicle" to put small military satellites into orbit. That craft was dropped from a helicopter in glide and landing tests, but it was never capable of actual space flight.
NASA awarded Boeing a $301 million contract in 2002 to complete a version of the X-37 to be used in approach and landing tests and begin designing an orbital version that would fly in 2006.
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Image Caption: Early artist’s rendition of the X-37. Credit: NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (NASA-DFRC)
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