Announced with the thunder of a sonic boom, the secretive U.S. military X-37B spaceplane made its return from orbit early Friday at 2:22am EST (0722 UTC). The uncrewed spacecraft touched down on a runway at Vandenberg Space Force Base, marking its first West Coast return since its third flight ended in October 2014.
Known formally as the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), this seventh flight for the program began with a Falcon Heavy launch on Dec. 29, 2023, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Its return to Earth closes out a 434-day mission.
Similarly with other such flights of the X-37B, little was disclosed about the OTV-7 mission, also dubbed United States Space Force-52 (USSF-52), heading into the launch.
Shorter, but more dynamic
Following it’s launch, there was much speculation about the orbit that it would be flying within. On February 9, 2024, Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and expert orbital tracker, stated on X, formerly Twitter, that the spaceplane was believed to be in a 323 by 38,838 km orbit at a 59.1 degree inclination.
In a press release on Oct. 10, 2024, the U.S. Air Force confirmed that the X-37B was operating in a highly elliptical orbit and was demonstrating a series of maneuvers, called aerobraking, to change its orbit. Boeing’s vice president for space mission systems told Aviation Week that the new maneuvering capabilities were made possible through improvements to the spacecraft’s collision avoidance, fault protection and autonomy systems.
“This novel and efficient series of maneuvers demonstrates the Space Force’s commitment to achieving ground-breaking innovation as it conducts national security missions in space,” then Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said in a statement.
In another first, the U.S. Space Force published a photog captured by the spaceplane while it apparently was quite some distance away from Earth. Data associated with the image state that it was captured on Feb. 20, 2025, which is the same day it was shared with the public.
The return of the spaceplane, on March 7, also marks the second shortest time on orbit for an X-37B OTV. The shortest flight was during the OTV-1 mission, which launched on April 22, 2010, atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 501 rocket. It landed at then Vandenberg Air Force Base on Dec. 3, 2010, concluding a more than 224-day operation.
Since then, and up until OTV-7, the Air Force has been flying progressively longer duration missions using its two Boeing-built vehicles. OTV-6 holds the record with a flight lasting nearly 909 days before landing at the Launch and Landing Facility in Florida.
While the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command hasn’t publicly announced the next mission launch for an X-37B spaceplane, it likely won’t be too far in the future, assuming the program will continue. Historically there have been between three and 13 months between mission launches, meaning the OTV-8 could very well launch before the end of 2025.
