Aviation Week reported behind a paywall that the US Space Force “landed the X-37B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 12, completing a 908-day mission that set a new record for endurance while performing several classified and unclassified missions.” Space News reported that this was the “sixth mission of the crewless reusable plane, built by Boeing and jointly operated by the U.S. Space Force and the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office.” On this mission, the “X-37B carried several U.S. military and NASA science experiments, including a Naval Research Laboratory project to capture sunlight and convert it into direct current electrical energy, and the U.S. Air Force Academy’s FalconSat-8, which remains in orbit. One of NASA’s experiments was the Materials Exposure and Technology Innovation in Space. Scientists will use the data to understand the effects of the space environment on different types of materials. Another experiment was to investigate the effects of long-duration space exposure on seeds.”
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Tag: Spaceflight Record
US Military’s X-37B Space Plane in Orbit for 900+ Days
SPACE reported, “The U.S. military’s X-37B robotic space plane just passed 900 days in orbit on its latest hush-hush mission, adding to the program’s flight-duration record.” The space plane launched in May 2020 and does not yet have a return date. The mission is the sixth of the X-37B; thus, it is known as Orbital Test Vehicle 6 (OTV-6) and is the first X-37B flight “to use a service module to host experiments.”
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X-37B Sets New Spaceflight Record
SPACE reports that as of Thursday, the X-37B uncrewed space plane “has been in Earth orbit for 781 days, breaking its previous record of 780. The reusable vehicle designed and built by Boeing is currently flying on its sixth mission, known as Orbital Test Vehicle-6 or OTV-6, which launched on May 17, 2020.” The X-37B’s current mission “includes several classified payloads, but some of its on-board experiments have been made public,” such as the US Naval Research Laboratory’s Photovoltaic Radio-frequency Antenna Module (PRAM), the US Air Force Academy-designed FalconSat-8 satellite, and “two NASA experiments designed to test the effects of radiation on plant seeds and assess the effects of space on various materials.”
Full Story (SPACE)