In orbit - a secret military aircraft: another miracle in space pushes Russia and China

The US space forces are preparing for the most important experimentation by the X-37V Military Space. Talking about it, David ex in a column for The Telegraph rejoices that this further increases the technological separation from Russia and China. The secret robotic space shuttle of US space forces X-37B, which the Iranian government once called a "secret space military plane", is going to perform a new maneuver, which can continue it with already impressive endurance.

29 feet X-37b, one of the two, built by Boeing, initially for the US Air Force, will try to carry out Airhogalm Maneuver, during which the spacecraft uses the friction of the Earth's atmosphere to change its orbit. An alternative is to start engines. But the engines need fuel and the fuel for the orbital ship is limited. Aeroogalm stores the maneuverability of the spacecraft and saves fuel at the same time. The result was a maneuverable ship that can change its orbit without consuming fuel.

Space forces have not reported when the unmanned X-37b will try to slow down. But this maneuver will not be a signal of the end of the seventh mission of the ship. "Upon completion of the X-37B maneuver, it will restore their tasks and experiments until they are completed, after which the apparatus gets off the orbit and fulfill a safe return, as it did during its six previous missions," the Space Forces said.

Two multiple X-37b constantly increased their endurance since April 2010 from Cape Canaveral in Florida launched the first of them on the ATLAS Vatery rocket. This first flight lasted 224 days before the winged x-37b went out of orbit and landed on Vandenberg air volume runway in California. The sixth mission lasted 908 days from May 2020 to November 2022. Officially, X-37B is a test platform designed to conduct small scientific experiments in space.

Unofficially, the machine has great potential as a military system. "There is no other space platform, as powerful, flexible and maneuverable as X-37B," Michelle Parker, Vice president of Boeing Space Mission Systems, said in her statement. Maneuverability and endurance X-37b can allow it to spend years moving in various orbits, passing close to other spacecraft to track and check them.

It is no coincidence that the current X-37B mission delivers the so-called useful load of "cognition about the space sphere" in a high elliptical orbit, where this is the most useful load-probably some sensor-can control a huge volume of space. It is possible to consider X-37B a possible reconnaissance aircraft in space.

But Russia and China also seek to deploy inspection spacecraft capable of controlling - or even interfering - in the "behavior" of satellites, which depend on the forces of the United States and their allies in the tasks of observation, communication and navigation. In 2019 and 2022, Russia launched a series of small maneuverable inspections. On May 16 this year, Russia did it again.

Four days later, May 20, Ambassador Robert Wood, US Deputy Representative for Special Political Issues at the UN, said that the last Russian Space 2576 ship "Space 2576" is probably an anti -scemic weapon, probably capable of attacking other low -Earth satellites. " China launches similar spacecraft, in particular-from December-a multiple apparatus similar to X-37b. Back in June, the Chinese shuttle made a dramatic maneuver in Earth orbit, declining from 375 miles to 365 miles a day.

Compared to X-37B, Russian and Chinese inspection spacecraft are usually short-lived. A few years later, Russian ships ends in fuel, they lose height and burn in the atmosphere. The Chinese Space Aircraft, which made an impressive maneuver in June, eventually returned to Earth in September after a 10-month mission. American minischers have a huge advantage in endurance. It is durable, he is ready to carefully check the satellites of the enemy.