X 37B

[EL PIC]

WoW
X 37 B and Earth

 

[EL PIC]

What’s your view about the X 37 B ??
What would be your story on how it is and can be used ?
Speculation is always encouraged ..

 

[Hevach]

Being military and not NASA we can make some educated guesses and weigh what's more likely.

Unmanned long term missions where the added cost and weight restrictions for returning to earth are acceptable. Small size substantially limits deployment and capture, and it hasn't been observed to do either (there's no stealth in space - you can hide what something is doing but not where it is).

There's a few amateur astrophotography images of it in orbit with a cylindrical structure protruding from the cargo bay. That would suggest some kind of telescopy, and the military backing would in turn make earth observation more likely than sky observation. However it's smaller than a KH-11 or similar observation satellite, and again, what benefit of recovery? Imaging has not required returning anything to Earth for decades. Unless you suspect signals are compromised there's no benefit, and the continuing use of non-returning spy satellites suggests that isn't a concern.

Altogether this makes me think the foremost mission is materials exposure testing, in the vein of the old LDEF mission and the exposure racks on the ISS. Not using NASA as those missions do further suggests they are specifically materials or equipment that they don't want civilian (or perhaps more to the point foreign, particularly Russian) eyes on. Things like sigint receivers, spy optics, radar absorbing materials, cross section reducing geometry, and so forth. Things that in their final operational form might never return to Earth but in the development phase the engineers still want to put eyes on after spending a couple years exposed to space.