China and the USA compete for primacy with space planes – 12/23/2023 – Science

With the upcoming launch of the X-37B vehicle, the United States takes another step forward in the escalation of the militarization of space. This will be the seventh mission conducted by the fleet of unmanned mini space shuttles developed by Boeing and now belonging to the American Space Force.

The launch takes place after China took its own mini space shuttle into space, on its third mission, on the 14th. Nothing is known about the Chinese vehicle. Of the American, we only know the outside. In both cases, the military keeps the activities that will be carried out in space extremely secret.

The simultaneity appears to be a mere coincidence. The Americans planned to launch their vehicle on December 7th, but there were successive postponements that pushed the departure to next Thursday (28th) and, if it is not possible on that day, there will be a new attempt on Friday (29th).

Could the X-37B be used to spy on the Chinese vehicle, until now never seen by the public even in photographs?

It’s unlikely, although nothing can be ruled out considering the secret aspects of these missions. It must be taken into account that they seem destined for radically different orbits. While the Chinese vehicle was taken into space by a Long March 2F medium-sized rocket, in a low orbit of 333 by 348 km altitude (data not released by China, but identified and released by the US Space Force), the X-37B American rocket will be launched by a much more powerful rocket, the Falcon Heavy, from SpaceX.

By the way, five years ago, when the Space Force began the search for a launch vehicle capable of placing the X-37B on its mission, it indicated the need to take around 6,350 kg to a geostationary transfer orbit. It is a very elongated route that, at its perigee, passes a few hundred km from the ground, but at its apogee it passes 35 thousand km from the planet, where many telecommunications satellites usually orbit. With the launchers used in previous missions (the Atlas 5 and Falcon 9 rockets), this mission profile was not even possible. It will therefore be the first time that an orbit of this type is used for an X-37B mission.

The choice seems consistent with the constant effort to test and push the vehicle’s limits (which in aeronautical jargon is referred to as “pushing the envelope”). In fact, with each new X-37B mission, its time in space increased. If the first flight, in 2010, lasted 224 days, the sixth, started in 2020, lasted 908 days – almost three years – before returning to Earth.

This, by the way, is one of the unique characteristics of these mini space shuttles: like their bigger brothers developed by NASA and launched between 1981 and 2011, they go up powered by rockets and come down like gliders, using wings to guide themselves to a landing strip. . As they are smaller and unmanned, they are even more versatile than the old NASA vehicles and capable of much longer missions – an ideal profile for military applications.

Well then. What will these vehicles do in space? From a military point of view, they can essentially serve four purposes: force enhancement, space support, space control and force application.

As an increase in strength, the vehicle could offer intelligence and terrain recognition (spy satellite function), communications and meteorology.

In space support, the X-37B could be used to take satellites into space or even recover damaged satellites – a mission profile that already existed for NASA’s space shuttles, until the Challenger accident in 1986.

As an element of space control, it could have offensive roles (impairing the functioning of enemy satellites and even destroying them) and defensive roles (monitoring the space environment and detecting attacks on satellites, avoiding them).

Finally, as an application of force, it could be used to attack ground targets. According to experts, the vehicle could be equipped with precision weapons such as laser- or GPS-guided hypersonic missiles, which could be used to attack targets deep in enemy territory.

To date, the Space Force says it has not taken weapons into space with its testing program, which rules out this latest use — at least for now.

Maintaining maximum discretion regarding this seventh mission, the Pentagon says it will cover “a wide range of tests and experimental objectives.” “These tests include operating the reusable spaceplane in new orbital regimes, experimenting with future space domain recognition technologies and investigating the effects of radiation on materials provided by NASA,” the Space Force said in a statement. Translating from “milliques” into Portuguese: fly higher and further, spy on satellites in orbit and carry out scientific experiments.

More than that, we won’t know. Of the Chinese mission then, even less. The only thing certain is that the two greatest space powers of the 21st century are expanding the scope of their military actions in space, which, like so many things in these times, sounds both inevitable and undesirable for the future of humanity.