X-37 takes to sky with White Knight

MOJAVE - The X-37, an unmanned technology concept demonstrator for future space vehicles, made its first aerial foray Tuesday into the skies over Mojave. Slung beneath Scaled Composites' White Knight carrier, the X-37 was carried to an altitude of 37,800 feet in the 81-minute flight, said Jan Walker, spokesman for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which oversees the program.

All systems performed as expected and the captive-carry flight was deemed a success.

Additional such captive-carry flights - in which the vehicle remains attached to the White Knight - are expected before three planned drop tests that will test the X-37's ability to land autonomously on a runway.

The additional captive-carry flights will launch and land from Mojave Airport. For the drop tests, however, the White Knight and X-37 will take off from Mojave Airport, but the experimental vehicle will land instead on the runway at Edwards Air Force Base, Walker said.

All of the flight tests will occur this summer, with the program set for completion at the end of the fiscal year Sept. 30.

The X-37 began as a NASA project to research possible technologies for a future space plane. However, as the space agency realigned priorities to meet its new vision for space exploration, the program was dropped by NASA.

The Boeing Co. program, nearing completion of the approach and landing test vehicle, or ALTV, then found a new customer in the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Although the plane originally was scheduled for flight tests using NASA's B-52 carrier aircraft from Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards, the project's new sponsor decided that was not the most cost-effective option available.

Instead, DARPA contracted with Scaled Composites for use of the White Knight aircraft for the drop tests.

The futuristic White Knight is best known as the carrier aircraft specifically designed to air-launch the SpaceShipOne spacecraft, the first privately funded manned space program to successfully launch an astronaut to suborbital space.

The X-37 vehicle was built at Boeing's Palmdale facility at Air Force Plant 42, then trucked to Scaled Composites in Mojave in early May.

NASA to delay X-37 test flight

Mon, Dec 15, 2003, 10:53 AM ET (1553 GMT)

NASA plans to delay a planned 2006 launch of its X-37technology demonstrator because of a lack of funding, Space News and Aviation Week reported Monday. NASA had planned to launch the X-37 in 2006 on an Atlas 5 and Delta 4; the vehicle would spend up to 270 days in orbit before reentering and landing on a runway. However, a lack of funding for the program prevents NASA from both funding the development of the orbital X-37 vehicle as well as carry out drop tests of a separate atmospheric test vehicle. Structural problems with the wings on the atmospheric test vehicle, as well as "typical development issues" with new vehicles, led to cost growth that caused the funding problem. The drop tests, scheduled to begin in late 2004 using a B-52 aircraft, are still scheduled to take place, while work on the orbital version of the vehicle will be delayed until NASA can find additional funding. The agency hopes to be able to allocate additional funds to the X-37 as part of an effort to accelerate the Orbital Space Plane project by two years. The X-37 program, which started in 1999 as a cooperative venture between Boeing and NASA with some Air Force involvement, is designed to test technologies that could be used in a future reusable launch vehicle or space maneuver vehicle.

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