The US Air Force ’s mellow - technical school , unmanned X-37B spaceplane launched on March 5 , 2011 , entering low Earth orbit with the mission naming USA-226 and a set oftantalizingly vague mission parameters : to “ demonstrate a reliable , reclaimable , remote-controlled quad test platform for the United States Air Force . ”
Now , a report in Spaceflight powder magazine claim to have uncovered the dead on target objective lens of flight USA-226 : to eavesdrop onChina ’s recently launched spacelab , Tiangong-1 .
China will launch a prototype of its space station afterwards this workweek
Popular Science ’s Clay Dillow gives a good sum-up of the facts we have at hand :
We bed that Tiangong-1 — which was launched back in September and is slat to host a manned bunch sometime later this year — is in an compass with an dip of 42.78 degrees at an height of more or less 186 miles . And we know — not from the Pentagon but from a group of argus-eyed unskilled outer space tracker — that the X-37B is orb at about the same altitude and at an inclination of 42.79 grade . Not only is that cranial orbit unusual for a military recon orbiter — they usually have polar orbits that offer good access to the full Earth — but it would sporadically institute the two satellite very close together .
It ’s worth cite that the “ argus-eyed unskilled space trackers ” that Dillow refers to are n’t exactly tinfoil - hat donning confederacy theorists . This hypothesis comes from none other than David Baker — editor in chief of the British Planetary Society’sSpaceflight magazine .
“ infinite - to - infinite surveillance is a whole young ball game made potential by a finessed group of sensor and detector suites , which we recall the X-37B may be using to keep up a close watch on China ’s nascent space post , ” he explains .
Baker ’s theory is n’t unfounded . The technical capabilities of X-37B are , after all , mostly classified , and the U.S. government has n’t incisively come off as trusty of China ’s efforts to establish itself as a spacefaring nation in recent years . Then there ’s the peculiar fortune under which X-37B ’s commission was of late extended ; originally billed as being capable of being in orbit for up to 270 days , the Air Force announced on November 29th that mission USA-226 ( which , you ’ll recall , launched 269 day earlier , on March 5th ) would be extended indefinitely , in the involvement of “ [ extract ] the maximal value out of the mission,”according to Lt . Col Tom McIntyre , X-37B system course of study director
China ’s Tiangong-1 launch at the terminal of September , and the country ’s unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraftsuccessfully launched and bob with Tiangong-1 in former November . Was X-37B launch month ahead of China ’s blank space post with the intention of eventually monitoring it from blank space ; was its mission extended when authorities realized that , according to the original mission timeline , they would only be able to squeeze in a few weeks of orbital espionage before having to return to Earth ; or is X-37B but going through test run of totally non - espionagy equipment not sight on China at all ? How far down the coney muddle would you like to go ?
China moves closer to have the reality ’s only space place
[ BBC+Popular Science ]
Top imagevia
Image of Shenzhou 8 docking with Tiangong-1via
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