X-37B LAUNCH

Does anybody have any guesses on what the planned purpose of it is? They are certainly keeping it as near top secret as they can.

Some say it may be intended to bring down foreign satellites, others say just to monitor them...but you could do either of those things with a regular satellite.

The military must have a reason they want to be able to send this up and get it back in one piece when they wish.

 

Next generation sensor testing. It's also going to be scaled up to carry passengers.

 

I did the original requirements for a Space Maneuver Vehicle (now OTV) in the late 90s and wrote the ConOps for Space Command. Also did source selection for AFSPC at NASA Marshall for what became the X-37A and X-37B. It is a maneuvering satellite with a RP/H202 storable, green propellant engine that gives it the capability to change orbits or act as its own upper stage. The payload bay can contain any kind of payload the AF wants to test and also has a retractable solar array. The X-37 was originally sized to fly out of the Shuttle bay and that is why the wingspan is less than 15'.

Our office also did the test of the X-40A, a demonstrator for the automonous landing phase, that originally flew in August 1998. The original design was much smaller and the vehicle grew as the program matured.

Fun to see something you worked on for years finally come to fruition. The flights match pretty well with the original requirements. There were FOUO and secret sections of the ConOps, so not much can be said.

 

it's basically a very mobile, reusable satellite bus. It can probably be used for other things, like maybe sticking a robotic arm on it to grab **** (enemy satellites?), but that would be secondary if at all. You can put any sensor that fits in the thing and maneuver it any way you want, many times. Electro-optical, radar, signal gathering..whatever you need, when you need it, and where you need it. You can change it's orbit any time so that it is unpredictable to people you are watching, whereas a real satellite can only more or less stay in the same orbit and it's pass=over times are known by everyone. Not to mention it's very expensive to test new satellite tech..a demonstrator can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and you only get one shot..if the sensor fails or the satelite fails when it gets up, or if something happens to the rocket, you're screwed. Now they can test satellite sensors without the cost and risk of a one-time satellite shot. Man the stuff they could do with a fleet of theses things..it could revolutionize intelligence gathering in space. Definitely a generational leap in space-based intel, I would say. People speculate about weapons and stuff, but what this thing is ACTUALLY doing is far more valuable.