Beijing, 30 Dec (Xinhua) -- The US Air Force X-37B unmanned space vehicle lifted off on the evening of 28 December to carry out its seventh mission. This is the first time it has been aboard the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle developed by SpaceX, which is expected to enter a higher orbit than ever before.
According to SpaceX, at 20:07 EST on the 28th (9:07 Beijing time on the 29th), the "Falcon Heavy" carrier rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and successfully launched the X-37B spacecraft into orbit.
On February 6, 2018, the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA. Xinhua News Agency (Photo courtesy of NASA) The company webcast the launch process, but shortened the live broadcast time at the request of the military.
According to CNN, the launch mission was originally scheduled to be carried out on the 10th of this month, but it was postponed several times due to weather and technical reasons.
The U.S. Space Force revealed at the end of November that the project "has a wide range of test and experimental objectives," including "operating in a new orbit," conducting "experiments related to space domain perception technologies," and "expanding the U.S. Space Force's understanding of the space environment."
According to Reuters, the X-37B's first six rockets were the Cosmos V rocket developed by the United Launch Alliance and the SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. In contrast, the Falcon Heavy rocket used this time has a stronger carrying capacity and is capable of sending a heavier payload than the X-37B into space, possibly about 360,000 km geosynchronous orbit.
This photo released by the U.S. side shows that on December 3, 2010, technicians inspected the X-37B aerospace plane that had just landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in the United States. Xinhua News Agency Midland X-37B flew at an altitude of no more than 2,000 kilometers in orbit for the first six flights, which belonged to low-earth orbit.
The X-37B program is a classified program of the U.S. military, and the U.S. Department of Defense rarely discloses its performance and details of each mission, and this time is no exception. According to limited public information, X-37B will conduct a NASA experiment to study the effects of long-term exposure to space radiation on plant seeds, and the ability to grow crops in space will be important for astronauts to maintain nutrition on future missions to the Moon and Mars.
The X-37B, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle, is manufactured by Boeing in the United States and is about 9 meters long and has a wingspan of about 46 meters, similar to the space shuttle, but only a quarter of the size of the space shuttle, part of the power comes from solar energy. Equipped with an automatic landing system, the vehicle is sent into space by a rocket and returns by taxiing and landing on the runway like an airplane, which can be reused, but not manned.
The X-37B aircraft made its first flight in 2010, and the duration of each mission has been extended, from more than 200 days at the beginning to 908 days for the sixth mission, and the cumulative time in orbit for the first six missions has reached 3,774 days, with a cumulative flight of more than 20900 million km. (Wang Xinfang).