SpaceX, Boeing team up for another flight of the military’s X-37B spaceplane
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US military’s X-37B spaceplane stays relevant with launch of another mission
The US military’s reusable winged spaceship rocketed back into orbit Thursday night atop a SpaceX rocket. The X-37B program consists of two Boeing-built spaceplanes, each resembling smaller, unpiloted solar-powered versions of NASA’s retired space shuttle orbiters. The rocket’s first stage booster detached and returned to an on-target landing at nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Falcon’s upper stage propelled the X- 37B into low-Earth orbit.
The core of the navigation experiment is what the Space Force calls the “world’s highest performing quantum inertial sensor ever used in space.”
This is one of many payloads mounted on the military’s X-37B spaceplane when it lifted off aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 11:50 pm EDT Thursday (03:50 UTC Friday).
The Falcon 9 rocket steered downrange and headed northeast from Florida’s Space Coast. The rocket’s first stage booster detached and returned to an on-target landing at nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, while Falcon’s upper stage propelled the X-37B into low-Earth orbit.
Space Force officials declared the launch a success in a press release early Friday. This is the eighth flight of an X-37B spaceplane since the vehicle’s debut in April 2010. The X-37B program consists of two Boeing-built spaceplanes, each resembling smaller, unpiloted solar-powered versions of NASA’s retired space shuttle orbiters. The program is managed by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office in partnership with the Space Force.
Military leaders tout the X-37B’s purpose as a technological testbed that can ferry experiments from Earth to space and back. Many of the spaceplane’s payloads have been classified, but officials typically identify a handful of unclassified experiments flying on each X-37B mission. Past X-37B missions have also deployed small satellites into orbit before returning to Earth for a runway landing at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, or Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.
On this mission, the Space Force says the X-37B carries instrumentation to demonstrate quantum navigation, and a laser inter-satellite relay terminal to allow the spaceplane to connect with other spacecraft in orbit.
The quantum sensor package will “inform accurate unaided navigation in space by detecting rotation and acceleration of atoms without reliance on satellite networks like traditional GPS,” the Space Force said in a statement before the launch.