In a rare disclosure, the Pentagon provides an update on the X-37B spaceplane

“If it's close to Earth, it's close enough to the atmosphere to get where it is,” she said. “That means our adversaries don’t know – and this is happening on the other side of the world from our adversaries – where it will show up next. And we know that drives her crazy. And I'm really happy about that.” “

Break the silence

The Pentagon rarely releases an update on the X-37B spaceplane during a mission. On previous flights, military officials typically announced some basic information about the mission before takeoff and then remained silent until the X-37B returned to land. The military is keeping details of the spaceplane's activities in orbit secret.

So Thursday's announcement from the Space Force came as a bit of a surprise. As the X-37B's seventh flight took off, there were signs that the spacecraft would ascend to a much higher orbit than on any of its six previous missions.

In February, an amateur satellite tracker spotted the X-37B in orbit by observing sunlight reflecting off the spacecraft as it flew thousands of miles above Earth. Subsequent discoveries confirmed the discovery and allowed amateur observers to estimate that the The orbit was inclined 59.1 degrees to the equator.

In its previous missions, the X-37B was limited to low Earth orbit, a few hundred miles above the planet. When it emerged that the latest mission flew at significantly higher altitudes, analysts and space enthusiasts speculated about what the secret spaceplane was doing and how it would return to Earth. A direct re-entry into the atmosphere from the spaceplane's elliptical orbit would expose the spacecraft's heat shield to higher temperatures than during any of its previous returns.

Now we have an answer to the last question.

As for what it's doing up there, the Space Force said the spaceplane on this mission “conducted experiments with radiation effects and tested technologies for sensing space domains in a highly elliptical orbit.” The orbit takes the

Military officials said previous X-37B flights tested a Hall effect ion engine and other experimental space technologies, without elaborating on their details. X-37Bs have also secretly deployed small military satellites in orbit.