June 23, 2010  Cambridge, Massachusetts - Two months ago on April 22, 2010, at Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, there was a launch of America's first unmanned robotic spacecraft.

Launch of X-37B unmanned robotic spacecraft on April 22, 2010,
at 23:58 GMT, from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station, Florida. Image © 2010 by Alan Walters, Universe Today.

That craft, made by Boeing, is called the X-37B. It is operated by the U. S. Air Force Space Command 595th Space Group at Schriever AFB in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Home of the 50th Space Wing,
Space Warfare Center, Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, 595th Space Group,
3rd Space Experimentation Squadron in 21st Space Wing.

Mission Control for the X-37B is handled by the 3rd Space Experimentation Squadron in 21st Space Wing of Space Command. But what IS the mission? Even the orbit of its discarded Atlas rocket around the sun is secret.

       
Left: Emblem of the 3rd Space Experimentation Squadron based in Schriever AFB,
Colorado Springs, Colorado, that handles mission control for the USAF Space Command's
X37B robotic spacecraft. The planet surrounded by orbiting satellites and spacecraft is protected
by the guardian presence of a Japanese Shishi temple dog or stone lion. Right:  Emblem of the
21st Space Wing tasked with early missile warning and space object detection equipment around
the world in support of NORAD and USSTRATCOM through a network of command and control units and ground-based sensors operated by geographically separated units around the planet.

Some aviation experts think the Air Force could be testing weapon delivery - even satellite warfare - from the robotic space plane at low Earth orbit. But others argue it's most likely testing satellite sensors and imaging equipment.

Whatever the secret Air Force mission is, some Canadian amateur space watchers were able to see the X-37B six times and calculate it is passing over the same ground region every four days. That's consistent with orbits of U. S. imaging reconnaissance satellites. The Canadians plotted the orbit to 40 degrees north latitude and down to 40 degrees south latitude - a wide swath of Earth that includes battlegrounds in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.

The X-37B looks like a smaller space shuttle. Boeing says the 11,000-pound craft is 29 feet and three inches long; 9.5 feet high with a 14-foot and eleven inches wing span. It's still orbiting at 18,000 mph some 255 miles up - and could stay up there for 9 months because it is solar powered.

Boeing X-37B artist illustration in 1999, but the NASA logo is no longer appropriate
because NASA transferred its interest in the robotic space plane to the Pentagon's
DARPA and USAF Space Command.

One scientist who makes a hobby of studying the launches and orbits of rockets and space satellites is Jonathan McDowell, Ph.D., Astronomer at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He says that the original idea for the X-37 was a cheaper, easier-to-fly craft beyond the space shuttle. Recently he talked to me about the robotic spacecraft's improvements and what its missions might be.

Interview:

Jonathan McDowell, Ph.D., Astronomer/Astrophysicist, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and member of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Cambridge, Massachusetts: 

“One of the improvements on the X-37 is that when it opens the payload bay, it unfolds a wing with solar panels on it. That generates electricity. The longest the shuttle can stay in space is only a little over two weeks. The record, I think, was 16 days. The X-37 has been up for a month and a half now and we expect it to stay up for at least six months, maybe even nine months. So even on its first flight, it’s showing this ability to stay operating by adding solar panels.

The X-37B payload bay can unfold a solar panel wing to generate electricity.
The solar cells are gallium arsenide with lithium-ion batteries. Solar power allows
the X-37B to stay in orbit at 255 miles up, traveling 18,000 mph, for
at least nine months before returning to Earth. Artist illustration.

That’s not a huge jump in technology. Satellites have had solar panels for a very long time. It’s a design feature they didn’t put into the space shuttle because the shuttle was not really intended for a long orbit stay.

But the X-37 is a robot spaceship. It does not have any astronauts on board. It’s no good having electricity for six months if you have astronauts on board and you don’t have enough sandwiches to eat!

IT’S UP ABOUT 255 MILES AND GOES AROUND THE EARTH ABOUT ONCE EVERY 90 MINUTES, CORRECT?

That’s right. Satellites in lower-Earth orbit take about 90 minutes to go around the world – pretty fast – about 18,000 miles per hour. The orbit of the X-37 it turns out goes all the way from 40 degrees south of the Equator to 40 degrees north of the Equator.

THAT COVERS NATIONS THAT WE WORRY ABOUT?

That’s right. It is probably not coincidental that it includes that band of latitude in the Middle East, for example. Probably not as good for North Korea, but certainly you can imagine the X-37 is looking at the Middle East. However, on this initial test flight, I am guessing that a lot of the targets it’s looking at are quite likely to be in the western United States.

[ Editor's Note:  An Earthfiles viewer contributes: “The orbital inclination of X-37B (OTV) is 40 degrees. This means that it will cover all areas between latitudes 40° N and 40° S. The dividing border between South and North Korea is at latitude 38° N or the 38th parallel as it is referred to, especially in the U.S.A. (worth a Google on '38th parallel'). So X-37B has two degrees margin which will cover Pyongyang, Kaesong, etc, but not quite up to the Chinese border. If it has the capability to observe someway either side of its ground-track then it could cover the whole of N. Korea. So there is no problem studying N. Korea from the orbit of this spaceplane.”]

What they do when they first fly sensors and we do believe the X-37 is carrying probably some kind of camera or imaging sensor – what you do is lay out test patterns in the desert where you know exactly what’s in those patterns and then you take photographs from the X-37 from space and that tells you how good your fancy new camera is.

THE PAST SIX WEEKS HAVE BEEN LIKE A SHAKEDOWN CRUISE FOR THE X-37?

That’s right. It’s both shaking down the spaceship itself, the X-37B, and whatever secret stuff it is carrying in its cargo bay. So, the idea is that the X-37 is a way you can test fly some new instrument that you want to put on next year’s spy satellite – get it up there quickly, shake it around, bring it back to Earth, tweak it, maybe fly it again, and then have it ready to fly on a more conventional satellite.

Why Is X-37B Solar Orbit Secret?

THERE HAS BEEN A LOT OF SPECULATION ABOUT THE SECRET ASPECTS OF THIS. CAN YOU EXPLAIN YOUR COMMENT TO THE NY TIMES IN WHICH YOU SAID THIS APPEARS TO BE THE FIRST TIME THAT THE UNITED STATES HAD PUT A SPACESHIP INTO A SOLAR ORBIT THAT IS OFFICIALLY SECRET?

Right. What I was referring to there was not about the X-37B itself, but the rocket stage that put the X-37 into space. So, what they have been doing is – you launch a rocket and you have the X-37 on top of it. And the rocket plops the X-37 off in orbit around the Earth.

Atlas V rocket launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida,
on April 22, 2010, carried the 11,000-pound X-37B robotic spacecraft
into orbit at 255 miles up. Graphic illustration by Atlas.

But because the X-37 is actually a little wimpy compared to what the rocket is designed to launch, the rocket has a lot of extra fuel left over. They don’t want the rocket hanging around in Earth orbit with all that fuel in it because that could explode into pieces and cause problems. So, they get rid of the fuel by firing the rocket again and shooting it very fast – so fast that it goes into orbit around the Sun.  The rocket escapes from Earth orbit entirely reaching escape velocity.

They did this same thing last year for a weather satellite where they had a similar amount of excess fuel. But this time because the X-37 B’s orbit is SECRET, they are also not going to tell you the orbit of the rocket stage either because you could work it back and figure out where it had dropped off the X-37.

BUT ISN’T IT TRUE THAT A GROUP OF AMATEURS IN CANADA SPOTTED THE X-37 AND PLOTTED THE ORBIT AND IF AMATEURS IN CANADA CAN DO THAT, WHY COULDN’T OUR ADVERSARIES?

Oh, of course, our adversaries do such plots. This X-37 is visible with the naked eye. You don’t need a telescope. You don’t need binoculars. All you need to do is look up at the right moment.

The Air Force is trying to keep the X-37B secret, but if you have a stopwatch and personal computer, after you have seen it a few times, you can use well-known math to calculate the orbit and predict where it’s going to be. To label it as SECRET, when it’s that easy to see, it’s like making the moon SECRET, you know? (laughs)

The concern that other people have raised about the X-37 because the USAF is being so secretive about it is, ‘Oh, maybe it is testing some kind of weapon.’

I think that is very unlikely, but I think that has come out partly because in the past couple of months, the USAF has been testing some rather similar technology that is associated with futuristic weapons. There was a rocket launched the same week as the X-37 that went out of Vandenberg AFB, California, and was testing a hypersonic re-entry vehicle that is probably associated with a future missile that might replace cruise missiles by being launched from the United States and heading anywhere on Earth with a conventional warhead within a small number of minutes.

So, there is lots of advanced weapons technology testing going on right at the moment and in some peoples’ minds, the X-37 got associated with that and people got a little nervous about it. Or maybe it’s a killer satellite that’s going to go up next to some other spacecraft and break off its solar panels or attack it.’  And really, that concern came out of the fact that the U. S. Air Force is not talking about what the mission is.

But I don’t think that’s what is going on. I think it’s just that the people who are running the X-37 mission are a different part of the USAF from the part that runs most of the space missions and they have a different attitude to secrecy. They are not used to this sort of public nature of most space missions, even most military space missions. And also partly, they want to reserve the option that they are going to fly more SECRET stuff in future missions, so they want to get into the habit of not wanting you to know what is on board the X-37 at any given time.

It is also true that if, as we suspect, it’s doing some spying from space that the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) that does the operational spy satellites is very quiet about what its spacecraft are doing.

X-37B Designed to Return
Small Cargo Back to Earth

THE X-37 HAS A WINGSPAN OF OVER 14 FEET, IS 29 FEET LONG AND LOOKS SOMETHING LIKE A SPACE SHUTTLE ALTHOUGH ABOUT A QUARTER OF THAT LENGTH. THE CRAFT’S PAYLOAD BAY IS THE SIZE OF A PICK-UP TRUCK BED, SUGGESTING THAT IT CAN NOT ONLY EXPOSE EXPERIMENTS TO THE VOID OF OUTER SPACE, BUT ALSO DEPLOY AND RETRIEVE SMALL SATELLITES.  AND WE JUST DISCUSSED IT CAN STAY UP FOR 9 MONTHS BECAUSE IT HAS SOLAR PANELS. IT SOUNDS LIKE THIS COULD BE A REPLACEMENT FOR NASA’S SHUTTLE SYSTEM, IF NECESSARY?           

That’s right, but remember it does not carry astronauts. But in other respects, it could do some of the things that the shuttle can do. The one thing we are really losing that normal rockets cannot provide is the ability that the space shuttle has to bring things back from space. The shuttle can bring back very heavy things, many tons back from space, whereas the X-37 could bring back only smaller experiments. But still, it will be the only game in the U. S. town if you want to put something up into space and then get it back intact of any size.

I think the X-37 B will replace some of the military applications that the space shuttle had. It will not be used to go back and forth to the space station (ISS). We’re going to buy tickets with the Russians to let us do that.

Some people say, ‘Oh, how can we keep access to space in Russian hands?’ But the U.S. will be developing the spaceships to push the real frontier out towards Mars. And I don’t actually have a problem with the idea that the stuff we already know how to do – the boring old stuff of just getting into space and back – we can let the Russians be the truck drivers to do that while we push on to the next stop to Mars, flying to asteroids – that will be the really exciting stuff for the decade of the 2020s.

Concentric Circles in Norway Sky
and Other Sky Spirals

“We have seen rockets being launched from northwest Russia,
and from the rocket range in Kiruna in northern Sweden, and from
the neighboring Andenes in northern Norway, but nothing like this.”

- Truls Lynne Hansen, Dir., Tromso Geophysical Observatory, Norway

December 9, 2009, early morning close-up of the white spiral
after a mysterious light rotated in the sky and from the center of the white spiral
came a blue-green spiral over northern Norway. According to some eyewitnesses, the white
and blue spirals remained in the sky for ten to twelve minutes before fading
out completely. Image © 2009 by Svein-Egil Haugen.

I WONDER IF YOU COULD HELP ME AND THE GENERAL AUDIENCE, UNDERSTAND WHY THREE TIMES IN THE PAST 12 MONTHS THERE HAVE BEEN PHOTOGRAPHS AND VIDEO RELEASED OF CONCENTRIC CIRCLES OR SPIRALS IN THE SKY OVER NORWAY,

Oh, yes the spirals!

AND RUSSIA AND THE SPIRAL JUST OVER BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA, THE BEGINNING OF JUNE 2010. 

June 5, 2010 - Brisbane, Australia

Based on direction and launch time of the Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Falcon 9 rocket test from Cape Canaveral, Florida - owned by Elon Musk, PayPal co-founder - the sunrise swirl over Brisbane, Australia, was the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fuel residue.

Geoffrey Whyatt, Sydney Observatory, told Australia's ABC News, “The fact that you've got the rotation, the spiral effect, is very reminiscent of the much widely reported sightings from Norway and Russia last year, which both turned out to be a Bulava missile, which was being adjusted in its orbit.”

On June 5, 2010, at 5:50 AM as the sun rose over Brisbane,
New South Wales, Australia, a resident there, Destin Sparks, saw
a “lollipop-type swirl” and photographed it (above). Other eyewitnesses
said the swirling light hovered stationary before moving slowly off toward the east.

WE HAVE BEEN DOING ROCKET LAUNCHES, HUNDREDS OF THEM, FROM VARIOUS COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD, SO WHY HAVE WE NOT SEEN THE PERFECT CONCENTRIC SPIRAL PRIOR TO NORWAY?

Right, why have we not seen this before and certainly this is a new phenomenon. I’ve been wondering about that, too, and I think really it’s the ubiquity of video cameras. These things are not happening within sight of the launch of the rocket. These things are happening hundreds of miles away from where the rocket was launched. Because of that, in the old days, we would never have seen it! Or if people had seen it, they would not have been able to video it and show everybody else.

BUT WE WOULD HAVE HAD DESCRIPTIONS IF THERE WERE BIG CONCENTRIC CIRCLES IN THE SKY.

Well, there have been plenty of UFO reports! (laughs) Maybe that’s some of them. The other thing is that we did not tend to regularly vent the fuel until recently. The leftover fuel from rockets used to be kept on board until that started causing environmental problems. So it might be partly because of a different strategy of how you use the rockets. And people being more used to looking in the sky? It’s probably a combination of things. But I agree, it is surprising that we seem to have so many reports all of a sudden after not having very many.

IS THERE ANYTHING ABOUT THE NORWAY EVENT THAT IS STILL MYSTERIOUS TO YOU?

No, not really. I think we knew within a few minutes what it was because we were aware that the Russian submarine had left port to test that missile. We were waiting for a report of the missile test. When I saw the video of the spiral, my first 5 seconds reaction was sort of the same as everybody else’s, ‘Wow! This is really weird. Is this a worm hole or something?’

And then after ten seconds, I went, ‘Oh, wait, it’s got to be the Bulava, the Russian missile.’ We were expecting that launch. There was a bit of confusion the rest of that day because the Russians were not admitting they had done the launch and so you could not really nail it. But then the next day they finally admitted, ‘Oh, yeah, we did the launch and it did not go so well.’

I have no real concerns about the Norway spiral. I think it’s a great physics lesson in how simple engineering can in a vacuum where there is no air around to mess things up and make it complicated, it can give you really regular, mathematical patterns in the sky.

I think the special thing about that Norway spiral is that it was such a perfect spiral seen by so many people in perfect lighting conditions (early almost-dawn). Because you also need the perfect lighting conditions to have the sunlight glint off the rocket plume and illuminate it for everybody. So, I think that it was – compared to the one over Australia recently after the Falcon 9 rocket launch – I think it might not have caused so much attention because it wasn’t nearly such a perfect spiral, except that people have started to look for these things now because they have seen the Norway spiral video and said, ‘Oh, that’s another one of those.’

And I think that was again a case where as you see the onboard camera on the Falcon 9 rocket during the launch, we could see that the rocket was rolling a little. It wasn’t bad, but it was not supposed to happen that way. There is a device meant to stop the rocket from spinning around and it doesn’t appear to have worked as well as they hoped. 

So, you see from the rocket camera looking back at the Earth – you see the Earth spinning below it – and that’s really the Falcon 9 rocket spinning. So, we know that rocket was rolling. As it orbited the Earth after successfully getting into orbit, what would have happened is that at some point, they would have vented the remaining fuel. You’ve finished everything you are doing with the rocket, you don’t want to keep the remaining fuel onboard because that’s dangerous and could cause an explosion – so you open a vent and you get rid of it. And if the rocket is rolling, then as it vents out if the vent is on the side, you will see exactly that kind of spiraling pattern as it diffuses outward. So, I’m guessing that is what was seen over Brisbane, Australia (June 5, 2010 at 5:50 AM).

HOW HIGH WOULD THAT ROCKET HAVE BEEN ABOVE THE WITNESSES IN BRISBANE?

That rocket was in about the 250 kilometer orbit, I think – so about 150 miles up or so.

YOU CAN SEE ONE OR TWO LOOPS AND WHAT YOU ARE SAYING IS THAT IT WAS A MORE STABLE ROCKET LAUNCH THAN NORWAY AND BY THE TIME THE FUEL WAS VENTED, IT WAS THE VENTING THAT CAUSED THE LOOP DE LOOP IN THE ROCKET.

That’s exactly right. You are not seeing the rocket itself. You are just seeing the fuel that got dumped overboard while the rocket was turning in circles.”

More Information:

For further related secret spacecraft information, please see other Earthfiles reports from the Archive below:

• 12/07/2007 — Part 2: Secret American Military Space Program?
• 12/01/2007 — Part 1: Secret American Military Space Program?
• 11/29/2007 — Part 2: Glowing Disc Encounter with Military in Albuquerque, NM
• 11/20/2007 — Do Black Budget Trillions Support A Secret American Space Program?
• 09/14/2007 — Part 1: Psi Spies - True Story of America's Psychic Warfare Program
• 04/28/2006 — Modern Warfare Applied to Extra-Terrestrial Invasion
• 12/24/2005 — Part 3 - Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
• 12/24/2005 — Part 4 - Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
• 12/02/2005 — Former Canadian Minister of Defence Calls for Public Parliament Hearings About UFOs and Extraterrestrials
• 12/10/2004 — Part 4: "Peculiar Phenomena," V-2 Rockets - and UFOB Retaliation?
• 03/17/2004 — Part 2 - "Horrible Secret" in UFO Crash Retrievals Near Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947?
• 02/23/2004 — Is There Liquid Water on Martian Surface?
• 07/18/1999 — 30th Anniversary of Apollo 11 Moon Landing, July 20, 1969

Websites:

“Surveillance Suspected as Spacecraft’s Main Role,”  052110 The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/science/space/23secret.html

“Secret X-37B Space Plane Spotted by Amateur Skywatchers,”  052210 SPACE.com:
http://www.space.com/news/secret-x-37-b-space-plane-spotted-by-amateur-astronomers-100522.html

USAF X-37 B Orbital Test Vehicle:  http://www.af.mil/information/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=16639

X-37 B by Boeing:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 B

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/ic/sis/x37b_otv/x37b_otv.html

USAF X-37B Fact Sheet:  http://www.af.mil/information/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=16639

3rd Space Experimentation Squadron:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3d_Space_Experimentation_Squadron

Schriever AFB:  http://www.schriever.af.mil/