AP: Shhh! Secret-shrouded Air Force spaceplane X-37B in orbit since last March and it hasn’t come down yet.
Sometimes the shorter a story, the greater its punch. The mind runs wildly after absorbing the AP‘s six-sentence story on decision by the US Air Force to leave its little winged orbiter called the X-37B, already orbiting the Earth for nine months, for an unspecified longer time. Then it is to reenter and steer itself with its stubby wings to a runway at, one can only presume, either at Vandenberg Air Force Base, or at Edwards AFB in California’s Mojave Desert. “..the ultimate purpose has largely remained a mystery,” says this un-bylined squib. Its ride to space was atop an Atlas booster with launch from Cape Canaveral.
Wow. There’s gotta be an Area 51 angle to this somehow.
Looking around for other accounts, however, one finds that secrets there surely are but the basics of the craft and its abilities have been in the news for a long while. A few days ago at the specialty outlet SpaceDaily Morris Jones had a knowledgeable-feeling and in portions clearly speculative story about what this automated spacecraft does and why. And he comes up with a prosaic and reasonable guess what sort of workaday mission the little bird is on. And he hints to why much is already known about it – before the Air Force picked it up, NASA get the program started. (Down in Grist you’ll find the official Air Force fact sheet on it. )
Other X-37B stories:
- Discovery News – Irene Klotz: New Mission For Secret Spaceplane? ; It’s made by Boeing, and Boeing is sniffing around to satisfy a piece of NASA’s appetite for new vehicles able to get people or supplies to the Int’l Space Station. So maybe the spaceplane is running some corporate tests, she suggests. She cites a study published by the aerospace giant’s chief engineer on the X-37B program.
- Santa Maria Times – Janene Scully: VAFB will wait for spaceplane landing ; The story can’t say what the mission is. But this diligent reporter gets the goods on the fine work the Air Force and base contractors are doing to make sure the runway’s divots and bumps don’t burst this craft’s skinny tires. That’s more than puffery. It is smart reporting – if her sources fill her in on this kind of thing and then see their names in the paper, maybe next time something better will slip out during the conversation. It could happen.
- LA Times: Air Force says it’s extending mission of mysterious X-37B ; This story, as do others, say this machine looks like a small version of the now-retired space shuttles. It has wheels, wings, and payload bay doors. But the shape is different. The comparison seems strained.
- Spaceflight Now – Stephen Clark: Military space shuttle receives mission extension ;
- Space.com – Leonard David (Oct 7, 2011) Secretive US X-37B Space Plane Could Evolve to Carry Astronauts ;
Grist for the Mill: USAF X-37B fact sheet ;
- Charlie Petit
