Secret Boeing X-37B Spaceplane to Do Something It Has Never Done Before in Space

The X-37B is a design by aerospace giant Boeing and it has been in the news, on and off, since 2010. It has been brought into this world as an orbital test vehicle, having been designed as a platform for testing both military and civilian technologies.

The aircraft was not meant to carry any crew, being in some sense autonomous. It is powered by a combination of solar panels and lithium-ion batteries, and it is roomy enough to be able to carry up to 500 pounds (227 kg) of cargo.

The X-37B is currently knee-deep into its seventh mission to space. Initially built to fly in orbit for up to 260 days at a time, it broke all records during the sixth mission, when it stayed up there for a record 908 days, performing all sorts of undisclosed tests.

The plane took off on its seventh mission at the end of last year, being carried into space by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket that took off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. It has been up there ever since, but in the ten months that have passed we've learned little about what it's been up to.

That changed las week when the plane's maker, Boeing, and its partner in crime the United States Space Force (USSF), announced they are getting ready to perform a maneuver that has never been tried before with this piece of hardware: aerobraking maneuvers.

That involves the plane using the drag of Earth's atmosphere to slow down in an attempt to move from a highly elliptical orbit (HEO), where it has been since its launch in 2023, to a lower and undisclosed altitude.

This approach will allow the X-37B to move between orbits while burning very little fuel. During the maneuver, the spaceplane will release the service module "in accordance with established standards for space debris mitigation." At the end of it all, the spaceplane is expected to resume its normal operations routine.

It's unclear for how much longer the X-37B will stay in space this time around. During the previous six flights the machine covered a total of 1.3 billion miles (two billion km) running circles around our planet.

The technology is so impressive that back in 2019 it was awarded the Robert J. Collier trophy by the U.S. National Aeronautic Association (NAA), something meant to recognize the greatest achievements in the aerospace industry.

The X-37B was selected as the winner for "advancing the performance, efficiency and safety of air and space vehicles," and the space plane joined a select company of trophy recipients that includes the Apollo 11 lunar lander and the International Space Station (ISS).