USAF Spaceplane lands.

[MKSheppard]

12/3/2010 - VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- The U.S. Air Force's first unmanned re-entry spacecraft landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base at 1:16 a.m. today.

The X-37B, named Orbital Test Vehicle 1 (OTV-1), conducted on-orbit experiments for more than 220 days during its maiden voyage. It fired its orbital maneuver engine in low-earth orbit to perform an autonomous reentry before landing.

The X-37B is the newest and most advanced re-entry spacecraft. Managed by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office (AFRCO), the X-37B program performs risk reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies.

"Today's landing culminates a successful mission based on close teamwork between the 30th Space Wing, Boeing and the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office," said Lt Col Troy Giese, X-37B program manager from the AFRCO. "We are very pleased that the program completed all the on-orbit objectives for the first mission."

OTV-1's de-orbit and landing mark the transition from the on-orbit demonstration phase to a refurbishment phase for the program.

The Air Force is preparing to launch the next X-37B, OTV-2, in Spring 2011 aboard an Atlas V booster.

This FLIR image was taken very shortly after it landed at 1:16 AM local:




X-37B, I presume?





REFLECTO-BELTS FORWARD!

[Zixinus]

I didn't even know that the USAF was even interested in making spaceplanes again. This is cool. Any more information about this thing? Or is it classified?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I didn't even know that the USAF was even interested in making spaceplanes again. This is cool. Any more information about this thing? Or is it classified?

It's been under development since 1999, and has bounced back and forth between several agencies. It started as a NASA project, found it's way over to DARPA, and was eventually transferred over to the USAF. Two vehicles were built, an X-37A, which was an atmospheric test vehicle, and the X-37B, which is the orbital mini space-plane. As you can see from the pictures, it's quite small, and distinctly un-manned. There's quite a bit of information about the vehicle itself that's available on the internets.

As far as I know, the USAF thinks of it less a spaceplane, and more a (future) rapid-deployment, reusable military satellite (as the X-37B is touted as a test vehicle.) It's spent the last seven months in orbit. What it was doing up there is classified information, although it's been repeatedly tracked by civilian satellite tracking enthusiasts. The satellite trackers noted that its orbital track repeatedly took it over North Korea, Afghanistan, and other areas of interest to the US military; and it operated at an altitude typical for military surveillance satellites, and it does have a payload bay big enough to hold the vehicle's solar array and other things that the USAF has refused to say anything about.

[Bernkastel]

Shep, thanks for the pics. It's good to see the USAF running projects like this, especially considering certain decisions that have been made by the current administration. Having more work put into developing space infrastructure and orbital systems is a good thing, at least in my opinion.

[GuppyShark]

What's with the spacesuits in the first few photos? What possible need could there be for that level of protection when checking out a landed craft?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

What's with the spacesuits in the first few photos? What possible need could there be for that level of protection when checking out a landed craft?

The ship's maneuvering thrusters use hydrazine. Hydrazine is toxic. If you're using hydrazine thrusters, it follows that you may end up with it all over the exterior of your spacecraft, and that not all of it may be cooked off upon re-entry. Hence, the bunny-suits.

[Knife]

It looks like a mini space shuttle, so what's the big whoop besides something like a shuttle is still flying? What new and amazing forward strides in rocketry or material science does this thing represent?

[Phantasee]

Well I imagine the materials are all advances over the Shuttle's, considering there's a twenty to thirty year gap between the designs.

[Chardok]

Plus - autonomous landing from orbit! That's pretty dang impressive in and of itself!

[Knife]

Plus - autonomous landing from orbit! That's pretty dang impressive in and of itself!

I was under the impression, so correct me if I'm wrong, that the space shuttle pretty much was on auto pilot on landing too, at least computer assist.

[Chardok]

Plus - autonomous landing from orbit! That's pretty dang impressive in and of itself!

I was under the impression, so correct me if I'm wrong, that the space shuttle pretty much was on auto pilot on landing too, at least computer assist.

I thought it was almost compeltely manual on final....

Hmm Wiki Sez: Almost the entire Space Shuttle re-entry procedure, except for lowering the landing gear and deploying the air data probes, is normally performed under computer control. However, the re-entry can be flown entirely manually if an emergency arises. The approach and landing phase can be controlled by the autopilot, but is usually hand flown.

[MKSheppard]

It looks like a mini space shuttle, so what's the big whoop besides something like a shuttle is still flying? What new and amazing forward strides in rocketry or material science does this thing represent?

It stayed up there for 270+ days

Shuttle can only do 14.

What you are looking at is the next generation of intelligence collection platforms. Unlike a normal satellite; it can easily change orbit to avoid interception by ASATs or KILLSATS, and it can change orbit to cover targets we'd like to get covered.

Finally, unlike a normal satellite; we can recover it at a runway once it's propellant has been nearly depleted; so we don't have to keep building satellites as replacements.

[PeZook]

Most of the Shuttle's limitatons are related to consumable stores for its substantial (7+ people!) crew, though. That thing is never going to be capable of the same things like the Shuttle, it's a different vehicle altogether. More like an orbital Predator than a newer, better space shuttle. The only similarity is the general configuration, but that's a result of the vehicle type - the Buran, after all, looked nearly identical to the Shuttle for the same reason.

And yeah, it landed autonomously without a hitch...on the first try!

That is quite impressive, since it show that these technologies are pretty mature, all things considered. It used to be that prototypes failed horribly in some way the first few times - we've really gone a long way from the early days of blowing up countless prototypes in various mishaps. It also showed in the Ares I test, which also went off with little trouble.

[folti78]

It looks like a mini space shuttle, so what's the big whoop besides something like a shuttle is still flying? What new and amazing forward strides in rocketry or material science does this thing represent?

It stayed up there for 270+ days

Shuttle can only do 14.

What you are looking at is the next generation of intelligence collection platforms. Unlike a normal satellite; it can easily change orbit to avoid interception by ASATs or KILLSATS, and it can change orbit to cover targets we'd like to get covered.

Finally, unlike a normal satellite; we can recover it at a runway once it's propellant has been nearly depleted; so we don't have to keep building satellites as replacements.

You can swap it's mission package out to whatever you want/need at it's next run too. Or you have a chance to bring it back early in case the current package malfunctions (wild ass guess, depends whether the package itself can be stowed back into the cargo bay and the bay itself closed) so you won't create a very expensive future traffic hazard upstairs/shooting star when you try to burn it up in the atmosphere.

[Temujin]

It stayed up there for 270+ days

Yeah, that's what jumped out at me. What were they doing all that time!

What you are looking at is the next generation of intelligence collection platforms. Unlike a normal satellite; it can easily change orbit to avoid interception by ASATs or KILLSATS, and it can change orbit to cover targets we'd like to get covered.

Finally, unlike a normal satellite; we can recover it at a runway once it's propellant has been nearly depleted; so we don't have to keep building satellites as replacements.

This is a great addition to the US military's space capabilities and exactly the kind of thing I wish they would fund more of. Not only is it better suited for the 21st century military environment than some of the shit that's funded, any technological developments can be readily used in the civilian space program.

[GuppyShark]

What's with the spacesuits in the first few photos? What possible need could there be for that level of protection when checking out a landed craft?

The ship's maneuvering thrusters use hydrazine. Hydrazine is toxic. If you're using hydrazine thrusters, it follows that you may end up with it all over the exterior of your spacecraft, and that not all of it may be cooked off upon re-entry. Hence, the bunny-suits.

It would also be quite hot from re-entry, with a risk of additional fire. Man that GuppyShark didn't think that through.

[Falarica]

Plus - autonomous landing from orbit! That's pretty dang impressive in and of itself!

Didn't the Soviet Buran shuttle do that nearly 20 years ago?

[FSTargetDrone]

Riiigght..."unmanned". Except this time, it went according to plan.

Didn't the Soviet Buran shuttle do that nearly 20 years ago?

It did indeed.

[Sea Skimmer]

Quite a few unmanned NASA lifting body technology demonstrators, while not reentering from orbit, also basically did the 80% job and glided back to automatic landings from similarly high speeds and altitudes after rocket boosted launch from aircraft. That data fed into the shuttle program. Still it’s not an easy task because still no one has really complete information on all the atmospheric and aerodynamic conditions involved. This is one reason why the space shuttle ended up with a very conservative heat shield system that weighs a lot more then was really necessary for example.

[Broomstick]

I thought it was almost compeltely manual on final....

Nope - almost the complete opposite

Hmm Wiki Sez: Almost the entire Space Shuttle re-entry procedure, except for lowering the landing gear and deploying the air data probes, is normally performed under computer control. However, the re-entry can be flown entirely manually if an emergency arises. The approach and landing phase can be controlled by the autopilot, but is usually hand flown.

The pilots on the shuttle have can fly the shuttle manually... but do not do so. They would only do that if the automatic systems failed, as an emergency backup. For shuttle landings the computer is primary, the human is backup.

[Coyote]

Conspiracy theory of the month: the mystery rocket trail off the California coast a month ago was a dummy missile fired at this thing to test its ability to dodge such attacks. Since we proved a couple years ago that an Aegis cruiser could whack a satellite, why not see if this could avoid a similar fate?

Eh, who knows.

Now let's build a scaled-up version, slap a VASIMR engine on it, and see how long it takes to get to interesting places like Mars.

Seriously, the USAF version of this is just a super intel and surveillance drone.