Top-secret X-37B space plane ready for daring new orbital maneuver After nearly a year in orbit, the US Space Force's secretive X-37B is prepped to perform some fancy new maneuvers to alter its orbit and dump its service module before carrying on with more mysterious work. Usually tight-lipped about the X-37B's orbital operations, the Space Force said yesterday that the seventh orbital test …
> It started off with NASA. It then moved over to the military under the Air Force
Actually, NASA shitcanned the project for no good reason, just before it was actually to go into space, after a ton of development time, energy and money went into it, and the USAF dug it out of the trash.
In a similar fashion, NASA shitcanned the FASTRAC engine, one of the former project engineers took it home, and Elon Musk hired him to "develop" the Falcon Merlin engine.
No, I'm not salty about my tax dollars being wasted, why do you ask?
Makes me wonder what other useful tech has gone into the bin at NASA.
This post has been deleted by its author
Pedantically speaking they were called the United States Army Air Forces or USAAF, sometimes just AAF, during Americas contribution to WW2.
Whilst the air corps remained part of the army capability till they were disbanded post war, USAAF were the major aerial force for the US between 41 and 47 and were the direct predecessor to the USAF.
"and the separation of USAF space interests into a separate space organisation has been an ongoing things dragged out over the past five or six decades."
Is that what actually happened, or was it more of a consolidation of USAF, Army and Navy space related activities? Or do the Army and Navy still have their own programs? And where are the Space Marines in all this? :-)
And where are the Space Marines in all this? :-)
Hiding from Games Workshop's lawyers.
(on which point, I wonder if Mr Miyagi's lawyers will claim trade infringements for catching a falling booster using some chopsticks? That was rather spectacular to watch, and impressive SpaceX managed to catch it the first attempt.)
This must be one of the maneuvers that they are hoping allows the X-37B to change its orbit mid-flight, allowing it to evade foreign tracking for a while so it can go somewhere unanticipated to snoop.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/07/23/former-secaf-explains-how-secret-x-37-space-plane-throws-enemies.html
Well, it's not secret when you can watch it do it, which China, Russia, and hundreds of amateur space trackers do daily nightly.
This was one of the things the Shuttle was supposed to explore, before it went "operational" and became too precious to risk on actual research. The Shuttle also never demonstrated the high cross-range that the USAF insisted on, which was a big driver in the final design, resulting in the big heavy delta wings.
What's actually secret is what's aboard it, and what those experiments are doing.
Also, we're saying we accomplished this before the Chinese do with their very similar CSSHQ space plane. So yes, it is willy waving aimed at an adversary.
Seems to me more likely it's a maneuver to cloak what it is actually doing for a short time until the trackers figure out what it just did with that orbit change.
Because it's traveling lower than most orbiting objects and thus subject to atmospheric drag, this particular maneuver is something that probably could not be accomplished at higher altitudes without that atmosphere to generate drag:
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/07/23/former-secaf-explains-how-secret-x-37-space-plane-throws-enemies.html
This isn't aerobraking, where the spacecraft body acts basically as a parachute to slow it down.
This is "aeromaneuvering" where you dip into the thicker air, which gives you enough lift on the wings that you can use them as control surfaces again to change your course. You actually don't want to slow down too much.
Yeah, I know I'm being pedantic, but this is the El Reg comment section. Plus I learned all this from Scott Manley and Kerbal Space Program.
Dropping the service module in a low Earth orbit, it will gradually slow down due to drag from the really thin atmosphere up there, then re-enter and burn up in the atmosphere. The international standards say it has to do that within a few years. But an adversary could inspect it during that time. Possibly even manoeuvre one of their satellites close for close up pictures. Or theoretically even grab it, perhaps have an astronaut pull out the interesting bit and return it to earth. That would be very difficult, but is not impossible, so national security people could worry about it.
For the new mission, they can drop the service module in an orbit which goes much lower. That way, the service module won't survive very long, it will rapidly burn up, likely within a day or two and possibly within an hour.
Yes that was one of the Shuttle scenarios.
It was never clear if that was going to be after WWIII had started or before.
Because capturing another countries space property can be viewed as a)An act of salvage b)An act of war
Just because something is physically possible does not necessarily make it a good idea.
Decades ago, the US covertly salvaged a wrecked Russian submarine in deep water. That could have been seen as an act of war too. But it happened.
Before spy satellites were good, the US routinely sent spy planes over Russia, Cuba and other enemy countries. That could have been seen as an act of war too. But it happened.
The US is publicly discussing how to protect it's satellites against foreign satellites. And has plenty of classified satellites. The US likely has the capability to get one of it's satellites close to an enemy satellite, to inspect it. That's likely one of the things that their X-37B spaceplane can do, although I expect they have dedicated satellites for that too.
Aerocapture when you're coming in from the Moon, or going into Martian orbit is much riskier.
Aerobraking can take very thin slices off the delta V cake on each pass. The solar panels provide enough area and the forces are low enough they are in the design limits of the probe.
But capture is a one-shot deal. All the excess speed needed to get there dumped in one (very) hot pass. No second chances. The payoff is a big reduction in braking fuel.
So this is a milestone for the X37b programme, but in general it's fairly known territory.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
