A year in space with an unknown purpose: Shuttle's successor, X-37B top-secret spacecraft

The X-37B, before the last launch

on May 20, will mark exactly one year since the launch of the Boeing X-37 space mission , in which the reusable unmanned X-37B OTV spacecraft was put into Earth orbit (USA-261 launch). This is the fourth launch of the devices of this series, the first of which took place in 2010 - but so far not all questions on these devices have answers.

The Boeing X-37, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), is a small reusable orbital drones project. A rocket takes him into orbit, and he lands on an aerodrome using wings using lift. The project was launched by Boeing in 1999 by order of NASA and the United States Air Force.

The initial development of the project, which was invested in various proportions by NASA, the Air Force and Boeing, cost $ 192 million, and due to the success of the project, the aircraft manufacturer received the following contract in 2002 in the amount of $ 301 million to continue development.


X-37B on the landing strip in 2010.

The project as a whole is based on the experience of building reusable Space Shuttle Orbiter devices.that went into space for 30 years, from 1981 to 2011. It was originally planned that the X-37 will be used to fly to satellites and repair them, and will be put into orbit in the Shuttle cargo compartment (X-37 is 9 meters long, Shuttle is 37 meters long). But then it was decided that the Shuttle’s withdrawal was too expensive for the space exploration program, and the X-37 was altered to launch into orbit with a rocket.

In 2006, the U.S. Air Force announced that it would independently develop a variant of the X-37, which was called the X-37B OTV. It was planned that the X-37B will be able to spend in orbit up to 270 days in a row. The Air Force Secretary said the development of the project will focus on “risk reduction, experimentation, and the development of a working concept for reusable spacecraft in order to achieve long-term space exploration goals.”


Comparison of different devices

As a result of all the modifications, it was decided that Atlas-V class rockets (the first stage of which uses Russian RD-180 engines) will be launched into X-37B space , and old hangars and landing strips will be used for landing and maintenance of equipment at Kennedy Space Center, which were previously used by the Shuttles.

At the same time, the specific goals and objectives of the program are kept secret by the Air Force. It only reports on "testing technology to create a reusable unmanned platform for the US Air Force." Electronic on-board systems, flight systems, navigation systems, thermal protection and atmospheric entry are checked. The current launch of the X-37B is officially associated with testing the new version of the engine on the Hall effect(a variety of ion engine), which in the future is planned to be used on NASA satellites.


Schematic representation of the apparatus.

However, the US Air Force has repeatedly been accused of trying to create space weapons and use the X-37B as a spy satellite. In 2012, statements were made about using it to spy on the first Chinese spacecraft of the Tiangong-1 orbital station class - however, they were quite convincingly refuted by the strong difference in the orbits of the vehicles. In 2014, The Guardian led the opinion of experts who believe that the device is experiencing the operation of systems for espionage and surveillance in harsh space conditions.


X-37B device

Questions are caused by the secrecy of the details of missions, in particular the lack of truthful information about their duration. For example, this mission was supposed to last no more than 200 days, but in three days it will be exactly one year old. If the Air Force really checked all the systems indicated in the official description of the mission, it would be in their interests to land the drone as quickly as possible in order to begin to study the results of the experiments. Its long stay in orbit corresponds to the behavior characteristic of observation satellites.

Of course, maintaining a halo of secrecy around military experiments is not unique. Maybe the X-37B really only conducts various peace experiments and does not spy on anyone. One can only hope that a new round of space technology development will not lead to a new space arms race, although the prerequisites for this are already emerging. Only in early May, the Washington Post The Washington Post published an article in which Russia and China are directly accused of developing technologies that allow them to attack US spacecraft.