Tag Archives: reusable spacecraft

Secrecy in Space

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A Pentagon spaceplane called X-37B zoomed into orbit this week for its eighth mission. When it will come back is a secret. The uncrewed vehicle can spend months or years in space before it re-enters the atmosphere.. That combination of flexibility and endurance has made it a favorite tool for military officials looking to quickly deploy new technologies on the final frontier. A SpaceX rocket launched X-37B on August 21, 2025 from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. Government and commercial engineers have spent years experimenting with lasers that allow satellites to share large amounts of data in space. The Pentagon is also testing tools like the inertial sensor, which could help improve navigation in situations where Global Positioning System signals aren’t available.

The spacecraft has spent the last five months on Earth after a 434-day mission that included tests of orbital maneuvers known as “aerobraking.” The move helps the vehicle use the drag from the planet’s atmosphere to change its orbit without using much fuel.  Military officials haven’t disclosed many details about the payloads that X-37B carries, but past missions included testing different materials in orbit and an experiment that transmitted solar energy to the ground. Its fifth flight released three small satellites that government officials didn’t acknowledge until they had fallen back to Earth. There’s a global strategic interest in saying what you’re putting in space,” said Jonathan McDowell, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. If the U.S. hides its satellites, “then the Chinese are going to start doing it too, and that’s not in our interest.”

China now fields more than 1,000 satellites and has developed a range of radio jammers, antisatellite missiles and other weapons capable of targeting Pentagon assets, according to a U.S. Air Force document released in May 2025. It also operates a competing spaceplane, called Shenlong, that has flown several missions.]

Excerpt from Drew FitzGerald, The Pentagon’s Mysterious X-37B Space Plane Embarks on New Mission, WSJ, Aug. 22, 205

Who Will be the First to Colonize the Solar System?

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A Chinese spacecraft touched down on grasslands in China’s Inner Mongolia region in June 2024, carrying the first-ever rock samples from the far side of the moon. A scientific breakthrough in itself, the success also advanced China’s plan to put astronauts on the moon by 2030 and build a lunar base by 2035. Such momentum is worrying American space officials and lawmakers, who have their own ambitions to build moon bases.

Unlike the original space race between the Americans and the Soviets, the goal of the U.S. and China isn’t just to make a short trip to the moon. It is to build permanent human outposts on its most strategic location, the lunar south pole. And as both nations gear up to build stations there one day, it is looking likely that tensions in orbit will mirror those on Earth.

Some U.S. officials fear China is planning a land grab. Chinese officials suspect the same of the Americans and are teaming up with Russia and other friendly nations for its south-pole outpost. The successful completion of the Chang’e 6 mission shows that, by one measure, China is ahead for now. Its lunar program has now soft-landed on the moon four times since 2013, the latest mission scooping up rocks near the south pole with robotic arms…

Meanwhile, after a decades-long moon-landing hiatus, two U.S. companies this year launched lunar-surface missions under NASA contracts. One lander tipped on its side after touching down. The other didn’t try to land because of technical problems. At least two more private missions, with funding from NASA, are slated to try to get to the moon later this year….All this is piling pressure upon the world’s most storied space agency. Through its Artemis exploration program, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans to conduct multiple landings in the coming years, develop a logistics station in lunar orbit and eventually build permanent camps on the moon’s surface. But Artemis has faced repeated delays and cost overruns while relying on a complex mix of government workers and private contractors…

“Unlike the U.S.-Soviet space race of the 20th century, this new round of competition centers on the water ice at the lunar south pole, with its extraction and use as a common goal,” wrote four scientists affiliated with China’s Academy of Sciences in a paper published in May. “The ability to collect and utilize lunar resources is a mark of national prestige and geopolitical influence. “We’re talking about colonizing the solar system,” said Greg Autry, a NASA official during the Trump administration.

Excerpts from Stu Woo, Historic Moon Mission Moves China Ahead in Space Race With U.S., WSJ, June 25, 2024

Conquering Space: China’s X-37B and the United States

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Ever since China claimed success in the secretive launch of an experimental spacecraft, experts have been pondering over what it could be and what it did in space.The spacecraft – mounted on a Long March 2F rocket – was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northern China on Sept. 4, 2020 and safely returned to Earth after two days in orbit…Unlike recent Chinese high-profile space missions, very few details have emerged about the vehicle and no visuals have been released. Chinese authorities have been tight-lipped about the nature of the short-duration excursion and what technologies were tested. The exact launch and landing times were not revealed, nor was the landing site although it is thought to be the Taklamakan Desert, which is in northwest China.

Three years ago, China said it would launch a space vessel in 2020 that “will fly into the sky like an aircraft” and be reusable. A reusable spacecraft – as the name implies can undertake multiple trips to space – thereby potentially lowering the overall cost of launch activity. A traditional one-off spacecraft – costing tens of millions of dollars – is practically rendered useless after a single mission.

The experimental vessel reached an altitude of about 350km, which is in line with China’s previous crewed flights. The spacecraft also released an unknown object into the orbit before returning to Earth…Once the testing is complete, such a vehicle could be used to launch and repair satellites, survey the Earth, as well as take astronauts and goods to and from orbit, possibly to a planned future Chinese space station.

The Chinese craft’s size and shape remain unclear but it is widely believed to be some sort of uncrewed space plane similar to the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle operated by the US Air Force. The recent mission could be linked to the Shenlong – or divine dragon – space plane project, which has been in development for some time, according to reports. A second Chinese reusable space plane called Tengyun, or cloud climber, is also in the works. If confirmed as a space plane, China would become only the third country to have successfully launched such a vehicle into orbit after the US and the former Soviet Union. The European Space Agency is working on its own reusable orbital vehicle called Space Rider, while India is also said to be developing a space shuttle-like craft.

The X-37B, resembling a miniature space shuttle, has been in orbit since late May 2020 following its launch on its sixth assignment. Very little is known about the X-37B’s missions, prompting speculation that the planes could be used for spying activity or testing space weapons.

x-37b

According to Bleddyn Bowen, China’s spacecraft launch is “just another part of China becoming a comprehensive space power that utilizes space technology for the purposes of war, development, and prestige like all others”.

Pratik Jakhar, China claims ‘important breakthrough’ in space mission shrouded in mystery, BBC, Sept. 9, 2020