The last few weeks have seen a few small articles on the tight lid the US Air Force put on its recent launch of a formerly NASA winged satellite the military adopted, the X-37B, that has been many years in the works. Space buffs find it intriguing – a sort of mini-shuttle that presumably could be launched by rocket here and be landing half way across the world in half an hour (or bombing something). Or it might skittle around in space for weeks or months before showing up at an air strip near anybody. Way cool. Also, a way expensive method for getting a package to its destination.

That news flow got much larger with, at the New York Times, William J. Broad‘s story on what is known about the unpiloted robot spaceship – and chiefly on how a band of determined amateurs sleuthed out its orbit and inferred that it is in an orbit known to be favored by US spy sat agencies.

Broad’s story is serious. If you want a more playful take, extracted almost entirely from the NYTimes account, check the techie site Gizmodo. Its correspondent Jack Loftus explains cheekily how well the amateurs blew the cover on X-37B’s path in the sky: Now we “totally know where it is right now,” Loftus writes. “…roughly anywhere between 40 degrees N and 40 degrees south latitude at an altitude of about 255 miles…”

That Gizmodo thing got me to thinking. With Broad’s story highlighting the ease with which these civilian sky watchers teased out its orbital parameters it seem likely that, in operation, this bird could be more elusive. Couldn’t they just paint it black to make it less visible? And maneuver it here and there with little squirts from small rockets?

The cloak and dagger atmosphere undeniably makes the story legitimate. It missed an angle seen in this photo – showing it being ferried to a test drop by the White Knight airplane that Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites of Mojave, CA, built for its X-Prize winning, Spaceship One  suborbital tourism prototype. The one in space now got there atop an Atlas booster.

UPDATE: As learned from comments, USA Today‘s Dan Vergano had a good background explainer and graphics before the launch.

Other stories:

• Register (UK) Lewis Page: Secret US spaceplane spotted in orbit by hobbyists ; Page also covered this project more broadly a few days earlier with US X-37B robot minishuttle: ‘Secret space warplane’? ; The latter story is well-done.
• Space.com (via MSNBC) Leonard David: Amateur skywatchers spot secret space plane ; Includes links to previous coverage ;

- Charlie Petit

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