Friday, April 23, 2010 — 6:49 a.m. — 25.0°F
Lift-off of the Atlas rocket delivering the X-37B to orbit.
Last evening the first launch of a Boeing X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle took place, apparently with no problems. At 7:52 p.m. EDT, right on schedule, an United Alliance Launch Atlas V rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral. At 8:09 the main engine cut off, and three minutes later the orbital vehicle separated from the rocket.
The final boost of the launch was provided by our old buddy the Centaur rocket, in this case the single engine variant. In a previous post I detailed the great service Centaur rockets have provided over their four decades of service.
Continued burn of the 1st stage. This launch employed a 501-configured Atlas rocket (5-meter payload fairing, zero additional boosters, 1 engine on the upper Centaur stage).
The X-37B is an experimental Air Force space plane, an unmanned small space transport that can be launched into low orbit, perform one or more automated missions, and then return to the surface for a runway landing, all under remote or automatic control. If the current mission continues to go well, the orbiter that launched today will itself be returning for a landing in California, although the Air Force is mum on how long this mission will last, saying only that the X-37B is designed to operate in orbit for up to nine months, and the duration of this flight will depend on the outcomes of various tests and procedures during the mission. Given the narrow 9-minute-wide launch window, it seems likely that on this mission the X-37B is intended to rendezvous with something already in orbit; the Space Shuttle generally has only a 10-minute launch window on missions when it meets up with the ISS.
The X-37B and its launching Atlas V rocket.
Gary Payton, the Air Force Deputy Under Secretary for Space Programs, describes the X-37B as “an updated version of the Space Shuttle”. That’s absolute hogwash, of course. Or maybe Payton hasn’t noticed that today’s X-37B didn’t carry any human crew, and no future launches of this vehicle or its design descendents will either. They can’t. And at less than one-fourth the length of a Space Shuttle orbiter, the X-37B’s payload bay size is described as comparable to the bed of a pickup truck, with a payload weight limit one source estimated at only 500 pounds, approximately 1% of the payload weight the Space Shuttle can deliver to low earth orbit. This vehicle may be more advanced in many ways, but it’s only legitimate comparison to the Space Shuttle is it’s intended use as a landable, reusable vehicle. In terms of mission capability and versatility, the two vehicles are worlds apart.
I had to think for a minute about which categories apply for this post. NASA has their own version of the X-37, but is not involved in the X-37B—it appears to be entirely an Air Force baby. The Space Exploration category is no good, as the X-37B is strictly an automated small-payload workhorse, handy to be sure, but not a player in space exploration. If it remains an Air Force program, it will most likely never be available for any purposes other than military. That leaves the News and Technology categories for this item.
