The article also makes the point that the US Government is currently monopolizing the militarization of space, so what are they going to do about it?
The US Government also seems to have a stranglehold on space travel. Which makes me wonder if non-US commercial companies are required to get a re-entry license from the FAA. I wouldn’t think so, but… ok, I digress.
Transparency. Openness. International cooperation. These are some of the principles the United States should embrace in order to “safeguard U.S. satellites and protect space,” according to a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Problem is, one of America’s latest and greatest space gizmos runs afoul of those noble ideas. With its secretive X-37B “space plane,” the United States has been anything but transparent, open and cooperative.
The Air Force launched the 29-foot-long, Boeing-built X-37 in April. Now six months into a potential nine-month deployment, the X-37 periodically changes orbits, frustrating amateur satellite-spotters.
Similar to the Space Shuttle, only smaller and fully robotic, the highly maneuverable X-37 includes a payload bay that can accommodate, well, practically anything. “You can put sensors in there, satellites in there,” said Eric Sterner, from The Marshall Institute. “You could stick munitions in there, provided they exist.”
The X-37’s flexibility — “dual-use” is the technical term — itself could be a little alarming to other nations. Worse, the Air Force has declined to say exactly what X-37 is doing now and in the future. Gary Payton, Under Secretary of the Air Force for Space Programs, was as vague as possible in describing the bot’s mission. “Take a payload up, spend up to 270 days on orbit. They’ll run experiments to see if the new technology works.”
But it’s not science experiments that have other countries worried.
They’re concerned that the X-37 could be used to spy on or even “hijack” their own satellites, using “inspection” gear tucked in its payload bay.
Washington could get away with this sort of space espionage because no other government has the technology to comprehensively track the activities of other nations’ space vehicles.
–Wired: Danger Room, “Secret U.S. Space Plane May Be Too Mysterious.” By David Axe.
By the way, the “mysterious space plane” and its capabilities were the subject of a detailed piece David Axe wrote for The Diplomat this past summer.