Secret Spaceplane Lands After 780 Days in Orbit

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The United States Air Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle-5 (OTV-5) has recently touched down back on Earth. After spending 780 days floating in orbit, the unmanned spacecraft has successfully landed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Ever since the 90s NASA has been considering the idea of launching an unmanned spacecraft to orbit. The organization has been looking for a cheaper alternative to its Space Shuttle orbiter. An unmanned vehicle would need much less thrust, and therefore fuel, to reach orbit and since there is no manned crew onboard, the spacecraft can stay in orbit for much longer periods of time.

At first, NASA and the Air Force have separately developed similar spacecrafts, however the project didn’t gain much momentum until NASA partnered with the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA eventually lead the project so that Boeing will construct the 29 foot long, 9 foot wide spacecraft capable of flying cargo to and from space with an 11,000 pound launch weight (excluding booster rockets). 

The X-37B was first launched into space in 2010 and since then has completed five missions according to Popularmechanics.com. 

The spacecraft is powered by solar cells with lithium ion batteries and thrusters for maneuvering and de-orbiting. The vehicle’s engines are incapable of traveling long distances in space or through the atmosphere, but it does have enough power to pull the spacecraft out of orbit so that it could land back on Earth.

But why does the Air Force need an unmanned spaceplane? For the most part, the X-37B is a classified vehicle that handles classified experiments up in space. Some speculations of the spacecraft include that the vehicle is actually a prototype space weapon for the military, which may be a plausible speculation, however there is no way to be certain yet.

Several foreign entities have shown some degree of concern towards the X-37B as it is capable of temporarily flying out of orbit into the atmosphere in order to slow down by increasing drag. This slows down the spacecraft so that it “disappears” on any radars based on satellites predictiveness.

The Air Force claims that the spacecraft performs “risk reduction, experimentation, and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies.” A recent accomplishment of the unmanned spacecraft has been shipping small satellites with it on its way up into orbit. Among this, the X-37B has assisted the Air Force Research Laboratory with experiments, potentially testing methods of space transportation for troops and cargo and more.