Air Force X-37B Due to Land Tuesday, SWF Wants More Transparency About Its Missions

Air Force X-37B Due to Land Tuesday, SWF Wants More Transparency About Its Missions

UPDATE:  The vehicle landed on October 17.  See X-37B Lands After 675 Days in Space.

NOTE:  As of 5:00 pm EDT October 15, the Air Force has not made any announcement that the X-37B landed.  The original announcement that it was returning to Earth said the exact landing date and time were dependent on technical and weather considerations.  Unofficial observers monitoring FAA’s NOTAMs (Notices to Airmen) and using amateur observations of its orbit can offer possible landing times, but they are subject to uncertainty. Reuters reporter Irene Klotz (@Free_Space) tweeted today that the landing “now looks like no earlier than Thursday, FAA pilot advisory indicates.”  Bob Christy at zarya.info calculates there is a landing opportunity that day (tomorrow) about 16:25 GMT (12:25 EDT).  This article has been updated to reflect the delay from the anticipated landing date of October 14.

UPDATED, October 15, 2014:  The Air Force announced on Friday (October 10) that its secretive X-37B spaceplane, in orbit for almost two years, will soon return to Earth and land at Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA.  At the recent International Astronautical Congress (IAC2014) in Toronto, Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation encouraged the U.S. government to be more open about what the X-37 is doing as part of the Transparency and Confidence Building Measures (TCBMs) the United States is advocating to help ensure space sustainability.

Officially called the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), the vehicle resembles a very small space shuttle.   The Air Force launches the robotic spacecraft for lengthy on-orbit classified missions.  This flight is the longest to date.  Launched on December 11, 2012, its mission duration will be more than 667 days.  There are at least two OTVs.  The first, OTV-1, made a 224 day flight in 2010.  The second, OTV-2, made a 469 day flight from March 2011 to June 2012.  The OTVs are reusable and this is the second flight for OTV-1.

Photo of X-37B OTV-1.  Photo credit: Boeing (via Spaceflightnow.com)

The Air Force statement said the exact time of the landing “will depend on technical and weather considerations.”  Initial indications were that landing was targeted for October 14, but that day passed with no announcement from the Air Force.  Unofficial observers are estimating potential landing times based on the FAA’s NOTAMs (Notices to Airmen) and amateur observations of the X-37’s orbit, but they are subject to uncertainty.  Check back here for updated information when it is available.

The classified nature of the missions prompts much speculation about what they are doing.   In an era when the United States and other countries are advocating for establishing TCBMs to help ensure space sustainability, some question why the missions are kept secret.   In an October 1 session at IAC2014 on “Assuring a Safe, Secure and Sustainable Space Environment for Space Activities,” the Secure World Foundation’s (SWF’s) Samson cited the X-37B’s secrecy as at odds with TCBMs.  TCBMs are norms of behavior that “nations that mean no harm” should follow, she said, including a willingness to share information about technical capabilities in order to avoid misperceptions.  She remarked that the U.S. “refusal to explain what the X-37B is [doing] has led a lot of people to assume the worst, and probably wrongfully so.” 

A 2010 SWF analysis concluded it “has near zero feasibility as an orbital weapons system for attacking targets on the ground” and has “limited capability for orbital inspection, repair and retrieval,” although speculation often centers on exactly such missions.  SWF concluded its most likely purpose is “flight testing new reusable space launch vehicle (SLV) technologies … and on-orbit testing of new sensor technologies and satellite hardware primarily for space-based remote sensing.”

The OTVs are launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL, adjacent to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC). NASA and the Air Force announced last week that the Air Force will use two of KSC’s Orbiter Processing Facilities (OPFs) to process the X-37B in the future.  To date the OTVs have landed across the country at Vandenberg, but the NASA-Air Force announcement also said that tests were conducted to demonstrate the X-37B could land at KSC’s Shuttle Landing Facility.   The landing facility and the OPFs are left over from NASA’s space shuttle program, which was terminated in 2011.

The X-37, built by Boeing, initially was a NASA test vehicle designed to lead to an Orbital Space Plane that could serve as a Crew Return Vehicle to bring International Space Station astronauts back to Earth in an emergency and, eventually, as a taxi to take them to the ISS as well.  NASA terminated that program in 2004 after President George W. Bush reoriented the human spaceflight program toward returning astronauts to the Moon instead of ISS utilization.  The X-37 program then was transferred to the Department of Defense.

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