While it is true that an attack space drone looks like a ship out of Star Wars, the reality is that it is not something that far away, considering that there is an autonomous ship, which has spent more than 2 years in space and whose technology has been kept largely secret. This is the X-37B, a ship designed by Boeing and DARPA. And this is the last we know about her.
The beginning of the development of the X-37B corresponded to NASA, but very soon it passed to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, for its acronym in English. During his time in space, he deployed a US Air Force satellite called FalconSat-8, which included five different tests, including a “plasma thruster, a metamaterial antenna, a carbon nanotube experiment, and a power augmentation and control device.”
But after its return to Earth, the X-37B OTV (Orbital Test Vehicle) variant essentially works like a space dronecapable of conducting surveillance, collecting data beyond Earth’s atmosphere, and potentially adapting to a weaponized military platform.
In purely scientific terms, researchers have used the X-37 to conduct experiments with solar power and “reusable” space technologies capable of performing a broader range of missions that intercept missiles of some kind. A US Air Force fact sheet says the X-37 uses gallium arsenide solar cells with lithium-ion batteries.
The key question is whether it could be turned into a weapon. The possibilities with this kind of progress seem unlimited when it comes to military usegiven the rapid advances in AI-enabled autonomy, data collection and analysis, and multi-domain networking.
The unmanned spacecraft would be networked with satellites as a mobile “node” beyond Earth’s atmosphere in an interlocking system to conduct surveillance, control ICBMs and program defense against hypersonic missiles, and even launch offensive strikes if they were to. directed by a human being. The proliferation of medium and low earth orbit satellites aims to increase performance, incorporate redundancy and allow hypersonic missile defenses establish a constant flow of information about possible threats.
An evolved X-37B could, for example, potentially defend enemy ASAT satellite assets or anti-satellite weapons. Furthermore, if carried out in an ethical manner (with a human in control), the X-37B could potentially destroy enemy satellites or targets from attack sites beyond Earth’s atmosphere. This would go against the peace treaties linked to space… but at the same time it would be a logical response to the efforts of Russia and China to take weapons to the skies.
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