Monday, the space force announced that will make the small space in the shape of a space shuttle fly on the eighth mission of the program next month. The launch of the vehicle, on a Falcon 9 rocket, is expected that it does not occur before August 21 by the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
There are two X-37B active in the Space Force fleet, both built by Boeing. The first made his debut flight in April 2010. Since then, the two invoked space vehicles have made a succession of longer flights. The first made his longest and most recent flight from 2020 to 2022 in a span of 908 days. The second has flown more recently, landing at the base of Vandenberg Space Force on March 7 after 434 days in orbit.
It is likely that the first of these two vehicles, both about 29 feet long (9 meters) and about a quarter of the length of one of the orbits of NASA’s space shuttle, will be launched next month.
Some details on the next flight
In the last decade and a half, the space force has remained largely silent about the purpose of this space plane, flying to payload classified and providing only limited information on the purpose of each flight.
However, for this flight, OTV-8, the military provided a little more details on his intentions. The vehicle will fly with a service module that will expand its ability of experiments, allowing the space aircraft to host the loading of the Air Force research laboratory and the defense innovation unit.
The objectives of the mission include tests of “high-widen band-width inter-sublance laser communication technologies”.
“The demonstration of OTV-8 laser communications will mark an important step in the ability of the spatial force of the United States to exploit commercial space networks as part of proliferated, diversified and redundant spatial architectures,” said General Chance Saltzman, head of the space operations of the United States, in a note. “In this way, it will strengthen resilience, reliability, adaptability and transport speeds of the data of our satellite communication architecture.”
Navigate in a world without GPS
The space plan will also make the development of a new navigation technology based on the interference of electromagnetic waves. The Space Force press release characterizes it as the “higher quantum inertial sensor ever tested in space”.
Boeing has previously tested A quantum inertial measurement unit, which detects rotation and acceleration by interferometry of the atom, on conventional planes. Now, an advanced version of technology is brought to space to demonstrate its profitability. The objective of the test in space is to demonstrate a precise positioning, navigation and the times in an environment in which GPS services are not available.
“Bottom Line: testing this technology will be useful for navigation in disputed environments in which GPS can be degraded or denied”, Saltzman said in a post on social media Monday, describing the flight.
Quantum inertial sensors could also be used near the moon, where there is no comparable GPS capacity or further exploration in the solar system.
In particular, the small X-37b has returned to the launch on a medium-lift rocket with this new mission. During his The most recent flight that ended in MarchThe space plane was launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time. This allowed the former-37b to fly beyond the low terrestrial orbit and reach an elliptical orbit of the upper earth.
This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.