Getty Image / U.S. DoD / Contributor
Over the last 720 days, a secretive space plane has been soaring above the planet and very few people know why. This week, the X-37B OTV-5 spacecraft broke its own record for orbiting Earth.
If the unmanned spacecraft stays in flight until next week, the United States Air Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle will have been on a top-secret mission for two years. The current 720 days in orbit marks the longest mission of the X-37B’s existence.
The #X37B #OTV4 is the newest and most advanced re-entry spacecraft. Find out more about today's landing here: https://t.co/GUGgOMQiYg pic.twitter.com/HfHHVnWhYc
— U.S. Air Force (@usairforce) May 7, 2017
The original X-37B OTV-1 launched in April of 2010 and landed after 224 days in space. OTV-2 departed in March 2011 and lasted 468 days, OTV-3 blasted off in December 2012 and spent 675 days of spaceflight, and OTV-4 launched in 2015 and lasted 717 days, 20 hours, and 42 minutes in orbit.
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The current mission, OTV-5, was brought into orbit with the help of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on September 7, 2017. What the X-37B OTV-5 space plane’s mission or what it has accomplished while orbiting nearly two years is not known by the public because the program is classified by the U.S. Air Force. The sixth X-37B mission, OTV-6, is believed to launch on an Atlas V 501 rocket in December 2019.
Air Force spokesman Major William Russell said there is no scheduled date for the X-37B OTV-5 to come back to Earth, but it will only do so after its objectives have been completed.
“The primary objectives of the X-37B are twofold; reusable spacecraft technologies for America’s future in space and operating experiments which can be returned to, and examined, on Earth,” the Air Force said in a vague description of the X-37B’s mission. Even the X-37B program’s budget is secret, but it believed to be at least a billion.
“Technologies being tested in the program include advanced guidance, navigation and control, thermal protection systems, avionics, high-temperature structures and seals, conformal reusable insulation, lightweight electromechanical flight systems, advanced propulsion systems, advanced materials and autonomous orbital flight, reentry and landing,” a USAF statement said.
The Boeing spacecraft is 29 feet long, 9.6 feet tall and has a wingspan of 15 feet. The solar-powered X-37B has a small payload bay of about the size of a pickup truck bed that can carry up to 600 pounds of cargo. The X-37B lands much like the space shuttles of the past, by landing on its wheels on a runway.
The OTV-4 landed at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral on May 7, 2017, and caused a sonic boom right before it touched down that was heard as far away as Tampa, Florida.
The X-37B program began in 1999 and in 2004 it was given to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an agency of the United States Department of Defense that develops emerging technologies for the military.
Since the X-37B is headed by the U.S. Air Force and not NASA, many believe that this spacecraft must have some military missions besides research and testing out space hardware. Since the X-37B stays in low Earth orbit, there is speculation that the space plane could be used for reconnaissance or something to do with satellites, whether it is stealing info from other satellites or there to disable military satellites from other countries.
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[IFLS]