SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket launched a secret military spaceplane into orbit last night after weeks of delays, although few details about the mission have been released to the public.
The Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off on a secret mission at 8:07 p.m. ET from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The US Space Force’s X-37B spaceplane, a reusable vehicle that serves as a secret testbed for in-space experiments, was the only payload on the massive rocket.
As with the other six unmanned X-37B missions, little is known about this mission. The target orbit, mission duration and several payloads are classified. Even the windows of the small space plane are blacked out.
One of the big mysteries of this particular mission is the Space Force’s choice to field the triple-boosted Falcon Heavy. This is the first time the Army has selected a Falcon Heavy for the X-37B mission; Previously, the 29-foot-tall spaceplane was launched aboard SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 9 rocket and United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket.
The additional boost could indicate that this mission is headed to more distant orbits, although the spaceplane’s mission profile remains classified once again. The Boeing-built X-37B, which looks like a miniature space shuttle, will eventually return to Earth and land on a runway similar to a conventional plane.
The mission, named USSF-52, has objectives that include “operating the reusable spaceplane in new orbital systems, experimenting with future space domain awareness technologies, and investigating the effects of radiation on materials provided by NASA,” the Space Force said in a statement. The only known payload tackles the last of these goals: a NASA experiment known as Seeds-2, which will explore what happens to plants when they are exposed to harsh radiation from space.
This is the fifth time SpaceX has launched a Falcon Heavy rocket this year, and the ninth overall since 2018. The successful launch followed more than two weeks of delays, first due to bad weather and then again due to issues that were not disclosed to the public. It was SpaceX’s 97th launch this year (the 98th launch was completed just hours later, when the Falcon 9 launched a group of Starlink birds at around 11 p.m. ET).