17 juillet 2018 | International, Aérospatial
The military is building a space plane. Now it looks to have an engine up to the task
By SAMANTHA MASUNAGA A decade after the U.S. Air Force commissioned the next generation of GPS satellites, the first of these spacecraft is finally set to launch into orbit later this year. As with other national security missions, a roughly 200-foot-tall rocket will blast the massive satellite to space, fulfilling a contract worth more than $80 million. But as nations develop technology to disable or shoot down satellites — as China did to one of its own satellites with a ground-based ballistic missile in 2007 — the U.S. military has started to look at options for rapidly and cheaply launching smaller crafts into space. An experimental program spearheaded by a Pentagon research agency could eventually be part of that solution. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, along with aerospace giant Boeing Co., is developing a reusable spaceplane expected to launch small satellites 10 times in 10 days. The vehicle's first test flight is set for 2021, which hints at the Defense Department's growing interest in reusable rocket technology, particularly its potential to drive down launch costs and speed up turnaround time. In recent weeks, the spaceplane's rocket engine, known as the AR-22, completed 10 test fires in 240 hours without need for refurbishments or major repairs, said Jeff Haynes, program manager at Aerojet Rocketdyne. The test firing took place at NASA Stennis Space Center in Mississippi from June 26 to July 6. The engine test is “really good progress,” said Claire Leon, director of Loyola Marymount University's graduate program in systems engineering and former director of the launch enterprise directorate at the U.S. Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center. “SpaceX has had its success,” she said. “I think this engine test also demonstrates that other companies are doing the technology development and having success that will enable reusability.” The title of first reusable system belongs to NASA's Space Shuttle, though more recently, several commercial space firms, including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Stratolaunch and British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit, have developed systems that would reuse aircraft to launch satellites from the belly of a plane. https://www.stripes.com/news/the-military-is-building-a-space-plane-now-it-looks-to-have-an-engine-up-to-the-task-1.538009