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SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket launched a secretive military spaceplane to orbit last night after weeks of delays, though scant details about the mission have been released to the public. The Falcon Heavy lifted off on the clandestine mission at 8:07 PM Eastern from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The U.S. Space Force’s X-37B space plane, a reusable vehicle that acts as a classified testbed for experiments in space, was the sole payload on the massive rocket. As with the other six uncrewed X-37B missions, little is known about this mission. The target orbit, mission duration and many of the payloads are...

<p>NASA’s next cargo delivery vehicle—a spunky little space plane that looks like it could be an offspring of the space shuttle—is getting ready to fly.</p> <p>The svelte and snub nosed Dream Chaser will soon be shipped to the Mojave desert in California where it would begin a series of ground tests that would eventually culminate with a flight from an altitude of 2.5 miles high.</p>

The US military is conducting wide-area surveillance tests across six midwest states using experimental high-altitude balloons, documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reveal. Up to 25 unmanned solar-powered balloons are being launched from rural South Dakota and drifting 250 miles through an area spanning portions of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri, before concluding in central Illinois. Travelling in the stratosphere at altitudes of up to 65,000ft, the balloons are intended to “provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats”, according to a filing made on behalf of the Sierra Nevada Corporation,...

NASA has selected SpaceX, Orbital ATK and Sierra Nevada Corp. to fly cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) starting in 2019, the agency announced today (Jan 14). Between 2019 and 2024, NASA will purchase a minimum of six uncrewed cargo missions from each of the three companies, agency officials said in a media briefing today. The space agency has the option to purchase additional re-supply missions from any of the three providers, and will likely do so, said Kirk Shireman, program manager for the ISS. SpaceX and Orbital ATK were selected as cargo providers in NASA's first round of...

The Chinese reusable spaceplane has remained in orbit for over 90 days The U.S. Space Force this week detected a Chinese reusable spaceplane releasing an object in orbit, officials revealed Friday. China launched its experimental reusable rocket on Aug. 4 and kept it in orbit for 90 days. U.S. officials revealed that space tracking data identified a second object in a similar orbit to the Chinese craft — the nature of which remains unknown. The U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron determined the object is likely in "very close" proximity to the Chinese craft at a distance of less...

As soon as 2023, the United States military could have a new spacecraft to transport troops to space and low Earth orbit locations anywhere in the world within three hours. Colorado-based aerospace company Sierra Space announced Sept. 8, 2022 that it signed a research and development contract with the U.S. Transportation Command to develop options to transport military crews and cargo around the world using the “Dream Chaser” space plane. The Dream Chaser space plane is a 7-passenger winged shuttle-like plane that launches to space on a rocket and flies back to Earth, landing on a runway. It’s designed to...

Tourists could fly from Britain to Australia in just four hours by the 2030s with a new hypersonic engine being developed by UK scientists, the head of the UK Space Agency has said. Reaction Engines, who are based in Oxfordshire, are in the process of building a hybrid hydrogen air-breathing rocket that will allow a plane to fly at Mach 5.4 - more than twice the speed of Concorde - then speed up to to Mach 25 in space. Not only would the new ‘Sabre’ engine allow speedier journeys - with a flight between London and New York slashed to...

Former Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson revealed to an audience last week that the X-37B spaceplane can pull off maneuvers in space that drives potential adversaries “nuts.” Although maddeningly unspecific, experts believe she was referring to the X-37B’s ability to change its orbit, throwing off both amateur and professional satellite watchers and making the spacecraft unpredictable. According to Military.com, Wilson was speaking at the Apsen Security Forum when she remarked that the X-37B "can do an orbit that looks like an egg and, when it's close to the Earth, it's close enough to the atmosphere to turn where...

The Air Force's top-secret X-37B Space Plane that appears to be the prototype for the world’s first stealth outer spacefighter just set a new record of 700-days in orbit. The X-37 is called the “mini-shuttle” because it is about 29 feet long, has a 15-foot wingspan, weighs just 11,000 pounds and there have been five Earth orbit missions since 1999 at altitudes between 200 and 250 miles. The current two reusable X-37B’s look like scale-models military “spacefighter,” but are officially designated as robotic “temporary satellites” to avoid violating the Outer Space Treaty that forbids weapons platforms at altitudes over 62...

Astrophotographer Ralf Vandebergh captured an image of the US Air Force's X-37B space plane in orbit. The reusable, uncrewed space vehicle, designated OTV-5, is on a secret testing mission since its launch in September 2017. From Vandebergh's post at Spaceweather.com: Images were taken through a 10 inch F/4,8 aperture Newtonian telescope with an Astrolumina ALccd 5L-11 mono CMOS camera. Tracking was fully manually through a 6x30 finderscope.

The reusable robotic vehicle, which looks like a miniature version of NASA's space shuttle orbiters, launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sept. 7, 2017. It's unclear what exactly the spacecraft is doing up there. X-37B missions are classified, and Air Force officials tend to speak of project goals in general terms, as this excerpt from the X-37B fact sheet shows: "The primary objectives of the X-37B are twofold: reusable spacecraft technologies for America's future in space and operating experiments which can be returned to, and examined, on Earth." Still, the Air...

Fans of supersonic flight have been yearning for a new way to break the sound barrier ever since Concorde stopped flying in 2003. Now successful tests of a key part of an air-breathing rocket engine may have brought that dream a step closer to reality. UK company Reaction Engines announced successful tests of a precooler on Monday, simulating conditions at Mach 3.3, or more than three times the speed of sound. That's more than 50% faster than the cruising speed of Concorde -- which used to make the journey between New York and Paris in around 3.5 hours -- and...

The craft's latest mystery mission, known as OTV-5 (short for Orbital Test Vehicle-5), began on Sept. 7, 2017, when the robotic spacecraft launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The Air Force doesn't reveal much about OTV missions, keeping most details about the space plane's operations and orbit secret. And satellite trackers have had trouble finding the X-37B on its latest jaunt — until recently. Exactly what the X-37B did during those four missions, or what it will do during the newly launched OTV-5, is a mystery; most X-37B payloads and activities...

Known as the Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator (LBFD), this X-plane is scheduled to make its first test flight as early as 2021 and "would open a new market for U.S. companies to build faster commercial airliners, creating jobs and cutting cross-country flight times in half," the White House budget request states.  The goal of supersonic aircraft like LBFD is to make commercial airplanes that can fly faster than the speed of sound without generating a loud and obnoxious sonic boom, an ear-splitting noise associated with shock waves generated by an aircraft as it breaks the sound barrier "Future supersonic aircraft seeking...

In a statement, SNC said that NASA concluded that the Nov. 11 free flight of the Dream Chaser engineering test article, at Edwards Air Force Base in California, met or exceeded all the requirements of the company’s last remaining funded milestone in its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) award from 2012. During the flight test, the Dream Chaser was released from a helicopter at an altitude of about 3,750 meters and glided to an autonomous runway landing 60 seconds later, reaching a top speed of 530 kilometers per hour during its descent. ... The milestone, formally known as Milestone 4B, was...

The upcoming X-37B mission — which is known as Orbital Test Vehicle-5 (OTV-5) — will lift off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Shuttle look-alike The Air Force is known to own two reusable X-37B space planes, which were built by Boeing. The vehicles look like miniature versions of NASA’s now-retired space shuttle orbiter; each X-37B is 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 9.6 feet (2.9 m) tall, and each has a wingspan of nearly 15 feet (4.6 m). The space drone has a payload bay about the size of a pickup truck bed that...

In Phase 1 of the XS-1 program, DARPA awarded prime contracts to three companies, each of which will work with a commercial launch provider: Boeing (working with Blue Origin), Masten Space Systems (working with XCOR Aerospace) and Northrop Grumman (working with Virgin Galactic). However, the Phase 2 contractor won't necessarily be chosen from the three Phase 1 participants, according to the Air Force Magazine report. The XS-1 space plane will consist of a reusable booster vehicle and an expendable upper stage. According to the DARPA website, the XS-1 program has four primary technical goals: + Fly 10 times in a...

"The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) and the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office (AFRCO) are investigating an experimental propulsion system on the X-37B on Mission 4," Capt. Chris Hoyler, an Air Force spokesman, told Space.com via email. "AFRCO will also host a number of advance materials onboard the X-37B for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to study the durability of various materials in the space environment," Hoyler added ... The Air Force owns two X-37B space planes, both of which were built by Boeing's Phantom Works division. The solar-powered spacecraft are about...

In aviation circles, the talk of the future involves phrases like "space planes" and "hypersonic atmospheric flight vehicles." A group presently in the spotlight is from Germany; they are carrying a roadmap for low-cost space access which involves calling upon the air passenger market for fast-travel flights. Welcome to the world of SpaceLiner, which, when fully developed, could have dramatic impact in global aerospace. The DLR Institute of Space Systems said this suborbital, hypersonic, winged passenger transport idea is under investigation at DLR-SART. (DLR is a German aerospace research agency and it evaluates complex systems of space flight. SART is...

If there is one British space project that has the capacity to inspire at the moment then surely it is Skylon.