Briefs · Frontier Science
The secret shuttle that keeps coming back
The X-37B is not a spaceplane, but rather a laboratory with wings — and it is back in orbit.
On 21 August, at 23:50 EDT, a SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted the Boeing-built X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. This is OTV-8, the eighth mission of a programme that never quite tells you what it is doing, and never quite stops doing it.
What is known is not unimpressive. The mission will test high-bandwidth laser communications between satellites, and the highest-performing quantum inertial sensor yet flown in space — a navigation system for when GPS is unavailable, jammed, or simply not to be trusted. The Air Force Research Laboratory and the Defense Innovation Unit are among the partners on board.
Firstly, this is a test of hardware. Secondly, it is a test of patience: the previous mission lasted 434 days. The X-37B does not hurry. It orbits, it experiments, it comes home when it is ready, and the details stay classified.
Conclusion: the X-37B is not a secret, but rather a silent, secretive shuttle — it flies, it tests, it returns.
Read the original at US Space Force
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