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After seven test flights, Boeing is finally starting to open up about its elusive military spaceplane. The company released a video detailing the experimental maneuvers currently being carried out by the vehicle in space to alter its orbit.
Boeing recently put up a brief, two-minute video on X, featuring an illustration of the X-37B spaceplane in action. The spaceplane is performing a “first-of-its-kind demonstration” to lower its altitude using atmospheric drag, traveling from a highly elliptical orbit to a new target orbit, the company explained on X.
🚀#X37B is currently performing advanced aerobraking maneuvers, taking it from a highly elliptical orbit and lowering its altitude using minimal fuel.
This first-of-its-kind demonstration expands our knowledge of dynamic operations between orbits.
Watch to learn more: pic.twitter.com/EjmeSxoOuw
— Boeing Space (@BoeingSpace) November 1, 2024
The U.S. Space Force’s spaceplane, built by Boeing, began a series of orbital maneuvers known as aerobraking, which uses the drag of Earth’s atmosphere to change orbit while expending minimal fuel.
The X-37B launched on December 29, 2023, riding on board a Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time. According to Boeing, the spaceplane has completed its time in the highly elliptical orbit, which forms an oblong shape with a low altitude perigee (when it’s nearest to Earth) and a high altitude apogee (the point at which it’s farthest from Earth). Now, the spaceplane is on its way to a new orbit using aerobraking.
Normally, the spaceplane would have had to use its thrusters to carry out multiple burns to change its orbit, using up its propellant. “When we aerobrake, we utilize atmospheric drag to effectively step down our apogee one pass at a time until we get to the orbital regime that we want to be in,” John Ealy, a Boeing engineer, said in the company’s video. “When we do this, we save enormous amounts of propellant, and that’s really why aerobraking is important.”
Before Boeing released the video, there was little information shared about the spaceplane’s ongoing mission. The Space Force only disclosed that its vehicle would operate in new orbital alignments and carry out experiments with “space domain awareness technologies.” It’s not clear what those technologies are. For its seventh mission, the spaceplane is also carrying a NASA experiment designed to expose plant seeds to the harsh radiation environment of long-duration spaceflight to gather data for future crewed missions.
The first X-37B launched in April 2010, and spent 224 days in orbit for its inaugural test flight. It’s certainly come a long way since then. The X-37B launched in May 2020 atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket for its sixth mission, and it stayed in orbit for 908 days before landing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in November 2022, beating its previous record of 780 consecutive days in orbit.
Spaceplanes are hybrid launch vehicles, operating in orbit like a spacecraft with the capability of landing on the ground like a regular airplane. China is in the midst of testing its own spaceplane, Shenlong, which recently completed its third mission after spending 268 days in orbit. Naturally, China is also quite secretive about its reusable vehicle.
Space Force’s X-37B has now spent a little over 10 months in orbit, with no clear sign yet of when the spaceplane will wrap up its seventh mission. The orbital maneuvers are bringing it closer to home, a possible indication that the current mission might end a little early for the spaceplane compared to its last stint.
